


The Promise

by Fenhello



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/M, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Inquisitor drank from well and oh boy, Post-Tresspasser, References to Addiction, Slavery, Slowest burn imaginable, and sometimes someone makes a dry joke, but mainly its tears, dead elves help out with grammar, everything hurts and nothing is fine, solavellan hell is fumes and bitter tears
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2018-10-02 04:38:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 48
Words: 183,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10209791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenhello/pseuds/Fenhello
Summary: She walked a lonely path, convinced that something was real, only to watch it turn upside down. She reached out for Solas and he twisted his shape. He tested. He tempted. He stayed so far away from her.Our love will survive this?What a damn stupid promise to make.





	1. For Love of the People

They began leaving Skyhold at the first signs of snowfall.

It had just begun to fall over the roofs and towers like a dusting of sugar icing as Nesterin stood in the courtyard, struggling to do up the buckles of her saddle one-handed. Snow landed on her hair and face and she thought, briefly, of her dream of Haven. Flakes of pure white had danced all through the air, she remembered, too perfect to have ever been real.

But she hadn’t guessed that when she’d kissed him.

“Inquisitor?”

Cassandra strode along the path towards the stables. With her sword at her hip and the Seekers' eye gazing out at Nesterin from the front of her breastplate, it felt as if they were preparing to ride out to some godsforsaken corner of the Hinterlands together. It might be to close a gaping hole in the sky, or to return a sour-faced widow’s missing locket, ripped from the stomach of a rift-addled bear.  

“I’m not actually called Inquisitor, Cassandra,” Nesterin reminded her. “Trust me, it’s not some ancient elven word for blessed child. Not nearly enough L’s for that.”

 _Mother Mine pulls a cloud down from the sky and pours it into my mouth. It tastes sweet and warm, like milk and she sings to me, her Blessed Child, her Blessed Child,_ one of Mythal's servants chittered away nonsensically in the background.

Nesterin tried to ignore the sing-song voice, half little boy, half wizened old man, as it tickled deep, deep down inside of her ear.

Most of the time, fortunately, Mythal's servants only answered when bidden. But she was always aware of them, sitting like guests in a banquet hall, waiting to be spoken to, growing ever more impatient when they went ignored. 

Sometimes they liked to chime in with their quiet long-lost memories. Most of the time, they enjoyed correcting her grammar.

“My apologies, it’s something I have yet to get used to," Cassandra continued, quite unaware of the interruption. "Would you prefer Nesterin? Lavellan feels a little too formal.”

“As opposed to Inquisitor?” Nesterin asked. But she understood.

Over the years, Cassandra’s particular intonation of the word ‘Inquisitor’ had changed. When she said it now, it sounded exactly like ‘my dear friend’.

“Are you going today as well?” Nesterin asked. 

“Yes. Like you, my intention is to leave before the snow on the mountain becomes too heavy to travel through." Cassandra sighed and looked around. “It is a shame. Otherwise, I might have liked to have...” she seemed to struggle to find the words, “lingered...perhaps for another night or so.”

“We were always going have to leave at some point. Skyhold was a castle fit for an Inquisition, but that doesn’t exist anymore,” said Nesterin. “Plus, Solas knows more about this place than anyone…”

“We do not want to give him the home advantage,” Cassandra nodded. She touched the hilt of her sword in a way that made Nesterin nervous.

But then she simply looked around the yard and asked, “Will you miss it?”

Nesterin had been with the party that found the quarry where the stone had been taken for the new tower. She knew the lumber for the beams propping up the great hall had been felled from a post in the Hinterlands. She had watched the banners go up, had seen the stain-glass windows put in, and walking through her green and practical little herb garden in the courtyard was always a great source of joy. 

And that was without even mentioning all of the people who had lived here.

She thought then - as she always did these days - whether choosing to dissolve everything they’d built here had really been the right choice. 

“Only home I ever had that wasn’t on wheels,” said Nesterin. “It’ll be so strange to go back. I imagine my clan will think I’ve put on all sorts of airs. Bathing in tubs and dinners with dignitaries and my own china pot to piss in? They’ll have never heard anything like it.”

“And this is where you intend to go next? Back to your clan?”

“That's the plan.”

Nesterin touched the corner of the left side of her jaw involuntarily.

Her face and her body had been so different when she’d left the Dalish. She'd been fuller then, Nesterin thought. Fuller in the cheeks, perhaps, a bit bloated from Halla milk and the last traces of her childhood. Fuller in herself, snarling and spitting like a wildcat because she was _Dalish_ and she was a _First_ and that had always counted for something before. Fuller when people looked at her because she drew the eye immediately- with her wild tangle of russet coloured curls and her face swallowed up by the elaborate darkness of Elgar’nan’s vallaslin.

The vallaslin had been, she realised, as good as an Orlesian mask for hiding behind. Even now- some two years later- her bare face took a lot of getting used to.

“And then to Arlathvhen- if the Dalish will still have me,” Nesterin continued. “We made mistakes in our history, but...,” she breathed out heavily. “It’s not _nothing-_ no matter what Solas or the voices from the well or anyone else might say. I am sure the Dalish will help us.”

Nesterin finished saddling Falon and walked closer towards his head. She patted his muzzle and he pushed roughly into her hand, snorting. The velvet touch of his coat made her very glad that she would have at least one friend with her on her journey.

“I suppose you’ll go straight to your Seekers?” she asked Cassandra.

“For now. There is much work to be done; training and repairing what has been broken. Divine Victoria’s chantry desperately needs the Seeker's gaze.”

With the sharp sniff that followed her words, Nesterin couldn’t work out if Cassandra meant the Seekers were required for Vivienne’s protection or they were for everyone else’s protection from Vivienne.

“But I will also await your instructions,” Cassandra added solemnly. “I want you to know in this respect, I will not leave your side.”

This, the leaving, was all so much harder than Nesterin had anticipated.

She could still remember a time when she couldn’t sleep, for fear Cassandra would pull her out of bed and onto a platform to slice her head off. A time when she used to bite her fist to stop from shaking or screaming or crying when she thought about what it meant to be called “Herald of Andraste” by the woman.

But now?

Now, she would miss her friend very much.

“Thank you, Cassandra."

* * *

The first time Solas left, Nesterin asked for her writing desk to be moved into the rotunda.

It was easier to sleep- she lied -when she could separate Inquisition work from the inner sanctum of her bedroom. And the rotunda was just sitting there empty; free and available and going to waste. She tried to be practical about it, she tried not to give into sentiment. She hardened her heart to a cutting edge.

It did not help her sleep.

Her desperation to reach the fade and reach out to him in some way made her boil all over with anxiety. And that, in turn, made it harder to relax into dreams.

She took sleeping draughts of varying degrees of strength until she couldn’t sleep without them.

In a book of potions, she found a particularly potent recipe for a dreaming sleep that contained large dosages of lyrium. Thinking of gentle and kind-eyed Cullen at his very worse- clucking and twitching, filled with rage and regret- and of every twisted red templar who'd crossed their path and died screaming was the only thing that made her stop. 

Nesterin stopped taking her draughts and stopped trying to find him in dreams.

She concentrated on the Inquisition above everything. She fixed bridges, signed papers and attended meetings. For a while, she was completely satisfied by the rotunda walls.

And then she saw Solas again.

At the crossroads. Stumbling and shaking and dying in front of him. Where every answer led to another question and every truth was twisted. Where he reshaped her waking world as easily as he'd once reshaped the worlds in her dreams.

And then he kissed her. And then he broke her. And then he left her all over again.

She stopped sleeping again soon after. And she had asked that they move her writing desk back into her room.

Now, the wolves in the fresco had started taunting her. Surrounding the image of the Inquisition’s sword, they threw back their heads and laughed and laughed until they started to howl.

Nesterin used to love watching him work. She’d lean a little on the balustrades of the library, unobtrusively as she possibly could, and look down. He’d roll up his sleeves to reveal the skin of his forearms, perhaps smearing plaster theatrically over the walls or delicately, intensely painting his figures.

It took him whole days, without eating or speaking to another soul. And he said she was the one with indomitable focus.

The images flashed through her mind. His bare arms flecked a little with colour, his intense stare, the little smile to himself the first time he’d caught her looking.

And then she saw the coldness in his eyes when he killed those mages in the Exalted Plains. And again when he turned Viddasala stone without so much as a blink. She used to love watching him.

But she had never once seen.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she demanded of Mythal's servants.

_The right questions are important, Da'len. Once, I meditated for thirty years upon the right words for a question. And the answer took eighty-nine._

_Time? I remember a time when the cherry blossoms bloomed for decades. But the branches grow bare and the earth begins to snarl and gnash its teeth,_ said the dreams of old, dead elves. She stopped herself from listening to them.

 _Stupid. Stupid. Stupid_. Nesterin wanted to bash her brains in against the beautifully rendered dress of the murdered empress for ever being so stupid.

“Almost everyone has gone now. ”

At the sound of another voice, Nesterin drew her eyes away from the painted rotunda walls. Leliana stood in the doorway. She was fully dressed for travelling, shrouded up in shadows, and carrying a cage with two large ravens jostling in it.

“Cassandra, you and I look to be the last ones to leave,” she continued. “Josephine owes me four silver.”

“Who did she have?”

“Iron Bull, propping up the tavern with the chargers and making love to the last of the serving girls.”

Nesterin laughed. She would have liked to have seen that. Would have liked to have left Skyhold with the sound of music and laughter in her ears as opposed to howling silences and the memory of the hollowed out, empty rotunda.

“It was always going to be us, though,” said Leliana.

“Could you guess just by looking at our shoes?”

“Not quite. Cassandra and I are the left and right hand of the Divine. In her, I always knew I had found my mirror of devotion. You have that same devotion too, Nesterin.”

“No, I don’t. I’m sorry, Leliana, but I never even once believed-”

“-There are other types of devotion aside from religious. Whose room are you standing in? Even now?”

Nesterin couldn’t answer that. Her face started to burn. It burned all along the lines of her lost Vallaslin.

 _Var lath vir suledin,_ she had promised him. But his back had already been turned, he’d already started walking away.

Now, in the weeks since, every day felt like a Harrowing.

She walked a lonely path, convinced that something was real, only to watch it turn upside down. She reached out for Solas and he twisted his shape. He tested. He tempted. He stayed so far away from her.

Our love will survive this?

What a damn stupid promise to make.

“I used to hear him working in here. I would open up all of the windows in the tower so the light would be able to get through. I never even imagined...” Leliana looked displeased. She glared at the wolves in a way that Nesterin recognised. They were laughing at Leliana too.

“If your people find him, you mustn’t kill him,” said Nesterin.

Leliana blinked. She didn’t seem to know what to make of that.

“Is that a privilege you would like reserved for yourself?”

“ _No_ ,” said Nesterin, too quickly and too sharply.

“Sorry, I was trying and failing to make a joke. It is very much the fashion in Orlais for the jilted lover to carry out the deed. They think it's all very romantic.”

“No, I’m the one who's sorry,” Nesterin sighed, rubbing her nose. “That isn’t really my idea of romance, Leliana.”

In her idea of romance he never would have lied. Never would have left. She had loved that quietly arrogant, quietly strange, fade-touched hedge mage so _so_ deeply. They could have roamed Thedas together, learning about magic and little, lost pockets of history, never quite fitting anywhere but inside of each other's arms.

And, like a dream of Haven with perfectly white, perfectly formed flakes of snow, he hadn't even been real.

“But you flatter me, Nesterin, by thinking my spies will find Solas at all.”

“We have to. He’s going to destroy everything if we don’t.”

“I have people. All over Thedas. They’re working very hard. But, Nesterin?"

"Yes?"

"I can find a man’s body. It is often too easy to find a man’s heart. But a mind like Solas’? That, I think, will be difficult to locate. And even harder to change.”

“I know,” said Nesterin.

The weight of her task, the weight of her promise felt so heavy on her shoulders.

Leliana turned once again to the rotunda, and to the laughing wolves. She said:

“Let’s all just hope he doesn't destroy quite as meticulously as he creates.”


	2. Come Not to a Prideful Place

Nesterin and Falon tagged onto the tail end of a party headed towards Denerim.

They made for a diverse group. Amongst their numbers was an older Orlesian couple who’d used Skyhold as a place of pilgrimage and now wanted to see the place of Andraste’s birth. With them, came a gruff blacksmith, three chantry sisters and four young soldiers who would have still been barefaced if they'd been born Dalish elves. 

A pair of elven housemaids finished off the caravan. They told Nesterin they had come out of a Kirkwall alienage and were returning closer to home.

She was certain they were Solas’ spies.

Nesterin knew Solas had spies all over the inquisition- he’d told her so, as plain as day- and these were both bright-eyed pretty girls who had attracted bodyguards in the form of the young soldiers from the barracks. Yet they didn’t pay the dashing soldiers much mind. They stayed close and they listened and they whispered among themselves.

Nesterin wondered how Solas might have convinced them to take his side. She wondered whether they knew the whole story or only Solas’ lies and half-truths. _All that Elven Glory stuff always gets_ elfy _knickers wet,_ she heard Sera say in the back of her head. _He really did a number on you, yeah? So who’s to say some other sap didn’t fall for it too?_

Nesterin didn’t know the whole story either. She still only knew Solas’ lies and half-truths too.

 _Hands against thigh,_ she imagined Cole saying then, also in the back of her head _The sound of clothes hitting the floor. Plump lips trapped between teeth. Teasing, tasting, testing. The hot rush of heavy breath. He talks of Arlathan. Beautiful towers,_ elvhen _who stand so tall and proud. He commands, “Say I will serve you. Say I would die for you.” And she does._

Or they might just be servant girls, going home to Kirkwall.

“Will you go to with us to Our Lady Redeemer’s Birthplace, Lady Herald?” asked one of the chantry sisters, late into the afternoon.

“Does Andraste guide you towards her birthstone?” said another.

 _No_ , Nesterin wanted to tell them shortly. _If Andraste ever guided me anywhere, I promise you, it goes about as far as the bottom of this bloody mountain._

“No, Sisters. But I thank you for the inquiry. I haven’t seen my family in a very long time, so I'm going to visit them.”

Inquisitor was a heavy title, but it was hundreds of miles better than Lady Herald. At least she could claim that, after a fashion, Inquisitor was something she’d chosen.

But now she was no longer the Inquisitor, it seemed that the name Herald of Andraste’ was going to stick. 

It did not help that Divine Victoria had issued a statement that the chantry officially recognised that Nesterin had been guided by Andraste herself during her time in the Inquisition.

It was a gesture from Vivienne that still baffled her. It wasn’t fuelled by any actual faith, that was the only certainty. Gift or political move or some kind of uncharacteristic prank, Nesterin still couldn’t work it out. It made her feel even more uneasy about the whole thing.

And she was already pretty uneasy about being venerated by a religion she had no affiliation to whatsoever. They might as well have made Falon the Herald. Chanting prayers and throwing flowers at her confused hart would have yielded the same results.

And in her darkest thoughts, she remembered Dirthavaren. And standing on the bones of elves who’d died fighting for freedom from chantry rule.

Had Solas felt it, she wondered? Did he taste blood in the fade around the Exalted Plains? Did he think that he was the cause? And did he feel sorrow? Guilt? A need for vengeance?

Or were all those dead elves too far removed from his own people to bother about?

Nesterin was no amateur when it came to appeasing- not anymore- and if the humans wanted her to be the Herald she could try and spin her discomfort into something that looked aloof and dignified. She could even smile and look beatific if she needed to.

Whatever it took to get her through the next hour. The next day. The next year. And for as many years as luck and fate and her smarts would get her.

No fucking way was she going to tolerate the prayers all the way to Crestwood though.

* * *

The snow vanished further down the mountain. It drizzled intermittently and the sky seemed impossibly grey. It stretched out forever and ever like a dirty blanket and Nesterin hardly noticed the afternoon edge closer into the evening until, at last, they stopped to camp, near the mouth of a shallow cave in the rocks.

Setting up with strangers, Nesterin missed the atmosphere of hiking in the hinterlands or travelling through the hissing wastes with her friends.

They used to chat; trading jokes, insults and stories. They cooked and shared scars and Nesterin had never ever spent so much time with anyone who wasn’t Dalish, an elf and a Lavellan. With each day her world seemed to grow wider and wider.

Yes, it was frightening, yes it was full of hurt and hate but- especially now, having tried, and arguably succeeded to save it, if only for a little while, if only a little bit- Nesterin realised she felt really rather possessive of it.

The Orlesian couple and the chantry sisters spoke and said prayers for a little while. The soldiers and serving girls tended the fire and passed a bottle around. Nesterin tried to select from the frankly aggressive amount of books she'd taken with her from the library at Skyhold.

The theory books were fascinating, but mostly irrelevant. Flicking through index pages in history books and finding scant passages about elves and massacres or petty theft or somebody's servant only made her sad and sorry and weary all at once.

After a while, the words on the page were just moving shapes. But she knew sleep would be as elusive as ever if she didn’t have help.

Nesterin eyed the bottle being passed around by the soldiers. 

Years and years ago, Iron Bull had taken her around the soldier’s camp at Skyhold. Had dressed her up like a mercenary- mostly her old clothes from before the conclave- and they’d talked.

Because generals needed to talk to their men, to understand their perspective and the things that they felt was worth fighting for.

Iron Bull was Ben-Hassrath at one point, and a damn good spy. He must have been able to work out that she was terrified of all of them. From the high command, down to the lowliest foot soldier. _Rat in a cage, rat in a cage,_ she heard them whisper at night. She got close, very close, in the early days to cutting off her arm herself. To gnawing it off with her teeth if that's what it took.

Nesterin got up and went over to the fire.

“Herald!”

One of the boys, scrawny and pale-eyed with his brown hair kinked into a slight curl jumped up immediately. He bowed and flushed bright red and said,“My lady.”

The other three jumped up too, but behind them, one of the elf girls snorted. Loudly. Loud enough to let Nesterin know she meant for the whole group to hear it- sharpened knife-ears or not

This girl had red hair, like Nesterin’s. But where Nesterin’s wild curls tended towards coppery tones, barely a few shades different from her warm brown skin, this girl's hair was like deep fire. Her face was pale and freckled all over, her mouth was full and she had cold blue eyes. She looked up at Nesterin with a snarl in her smile.

“You’re playing Wicked Grace?” Nesterin asked, looking at the cards. “Do you think you might deal me in?”

“We’re playing for money,” warned one of the soldiers.

“That’s lucky. I have to get rid of all mine,” said Nesterin,

“Swapping it for halla leather and pig shit when you get back to the Dalish?” asked the redhead with a sneer. Nestern's smile wavered.

“Something like that,” she agreed.

The other elf girl was charged with dealing. She was a pale blonde, all the way up to her eyebrows and she was tall and strong and striking. As Nesterin struggled to organise her hand with, well, one hand, around the circle, they introduced themselves. The soldiers were all named in the Fereldan style. Strong names. Like Perry and Adam and Marcus. The blonde elf called herself Leanne, the redhead was Revekah.

It was not a friendly game of cards.

Nesterin thought they’d team up to screw her over, and she wasn’t wrong. The good-natured soldier boys folded early, happy to take their few coins with them, but the elf girls watched her closely, taunting poor play and laughing to themselves. It took Nesterin a few rounds to get into the swing of things but she began to see the steely precision of the blonde and the redhead’s desire to apparently humiliate Nesterin as much as possible.

“Now look, she’s playing like a camp follower,” said Revekah triumphantly when Nesterin finally managed to win a round with a handful of Serpents.“As opposed to an Orlesian lady gone to tea. Double or nothing.”

“What’s a camp follower?” asked Nesterin. It was not a term she’d heard used before.

One of the boys laughed. Another nudged him in the ribs, shooting him a death glare.

“You know. Camp follower. We go where the soldiers go,” said Revekah.“We give them what they need.”

“Oh. You’re prostitutes?”

“That a problem?”

“Forgive me, no. No ,no, no," she stopped herself at four awkward no's and that was already far too many. "I don’t have a problem at all, no. It’s just...I wasn't aware that Skyhold had camp followers.”

The soldiers looked sheepish, but Revekah burst out laughing. “Skyhold had men, didn’t it?” she crowed, making Nesterin feel both very small and about six years old for being so naive.

“ But don't they say Dalish women love it so much they give it away for free anyway?” the redhead continued.

That old insult might have been offensive if Nesterin hadn't already heard it a thousand times, a thousand ways, from Lords and Ladies down to beggars on the street. Instead, she was still fixated on Revekah's revelation: she honestly didn't know that there had been camp followers or prostitutes or whatever they were called at Skyhold. She might have put it down to the number of chantry sisters swarming about the place if she’d thought about it at all- which she hadn’t.

So that was her inquisition. Made up of quanari spies she didn't know about, spies of Fen'Harel she didn't know about, Fen'harel himself for a short time and apparently prostitutes swarming all over to boot. If there had been a dragon in the dungeon would she even have noticed it?"

“You want to know who used our services?” Revekah asked, her eyes sparkling with glee. “Want to see if you know them intimately?”

“Not particularly, no,” said Nesterin coolly.

She pretended to look down at her hand. It was shit, probably, but she’d momentarily forgotten the value of every single card in the deck. “I think I’m going to put in three silvers,” she said

Nesterin wondered if the prostitutes had all been elves.

Most of the servants were and she’d hated it. Hated when they bowed and looked afraid and scuttled around silently in the corners. It wasn’t as if she could have even asked for human servants either because that would be putting some elf somewhere out of work.

 _Why should it matter?_ She told herself firmly. _There is no shame in it_. _The world was ending. And what goes on in someone’s bedchamber is their own damn business. The girls get treated well, they get paid, people get what they need and the world gets saved._

“The elf girls did a good business at Skyhold. Surprise, surprise,” said Revekah, as if she’d stepped right into Nesterin’s brains and plucked out the darkest of her thoughts. “There was this sweet little thing come in from Rivain, all dusky and wild-eyed like you, my lady, and she cleaned up.”

Nesterin felt her lip curl and her spine felt tight. She pictured this brown-skinned elf girl who might look like her, in a low light, or from behind. And her soldiers were fucking her. 

Nesterin fought to keep her face placid, but it was one of the most difficult spells she’d ever attempted to cast. Her energy, her focus, her will- she could feel them all draining away from her.

“You can’t speak to the Herald like that!” said one of the soldier boys angrily.

“Revekah, don’t be so coarse,” said Leanne, finally. She’d been tight-lipped up to this point, only rarely speaking in her low musical voice. But she spoke now, her tone firm, her nostrils flaring with distaste.

“Call it enforcing what they think as the natural order of things. In public they might raise you up, _Herald_ , but in private the humans still dearly love to see our people on our knees in front of them.”

The angry soldier boy leapt to his feet. He swayed drunkenly and stumbled as he did so.

“Revekah, enough!” said Leanne.

“I fold,” snapped Nesterin, throwing down the cards. Boiling all over, she decided it would be very wise to extricate herself from the situation before she ended up hitting the red headed woman square in the jaw.

“And you want to let them do it. I bet you’ve bent over for more shems than any other whore in Skyhold”

As hard as she was trying to stand stiff and not lose her temper, Nesterin realised a fraction of a second too late that the soldier had lunged forwards and punched Revekah right on the nose.

With her very typical elven frame she was so slender and so much smaller than the soldier that she went down quickly. Burning fruitwood smells filled up their nostrils and something in the air hummed as Nesterin cast her barrier over the woman, preventing the soldier from landing anymore blows.

“Enough!” said Nesterin, rounding on the boy. “That is no way for a soldier of the inquisition to behave. You’re drunk. Go and sleep it off! That’s an order! And it goes for the rest of you too,” she added to the remaining men.

Though she struggled to hold her spirit blade without her left arm, Nesterin was still a Knight Enchanter. She’d watched Cullen and Cassandra closely and learned to lead charges and take command on the battlefield. And she’d learned that using the kind of voice that could cause a man’s balls to jump right up inside of his body was about eighty-five percent of the battle.

He didn’t have to listen to her, of course- the Inquisition didn’t exist; she wasn’t in charge of anyone, she was just the same as the elf girl on the floor- but he and the rest of the soldiers trailed off apologetically to their own respective tents.

From the ground, Nesterin heard chuckling. A low bitter kind of laughter that made Nesterin feel cold all over. Revekah’s nose had shattered with the punch. Blood gushed out of her nostrils, into her mouth, onto her shirt, and turned black in the dirt beneath her body.

“Ma banal las halamshir var vhen,” Revekah said, smiling and spitting flecks of blood as she did so. “You’re nothing special. You don’t have anything I don’t.”

Nesterin felt like her jaw was going to break. Gazing down, horrified at the bloody-faced woman, it didn't occur to her to Nesterin to offer to heal her. Nothing occurred to her apart from the fact that she wanted to get away. Get away and hide and not have to look at Revekah, her eyes full of hate and laughter, or hear her speak again.

Except for the bottle.

The bottle occurred to her. And she bent down to collect it before she left. 

 _Ma banal las_ _halamshir var vhen? You give nothing to our people? No, no, no. This is bad. Where is the auxiliary verb? And it is also boring,_ someone whispered in the back of her head. _I think she means to say "You are a viper amongst our people"._

 _"You are poison to the elves? "_ another of Mythal's servants asked. 

_Or, "Your sleeves dry black with elvhen blood"_

"Stop talking to me," Nesterin told Mythal's servants out loud. "Stop talking to me unless you are actually going to help me."

There was quiet for a moment. And then, petulantly... _Good grammar **is** helping_

Nesterin took a long sip of whisky. She took another. And another. And she didn't stop until she'd drunk enough to pass out.


	3. You Do Nothing to Further Our People

In her dreams, she rode a hart so white it might have been dipped into pure burning liquid metal. She wore golden armour and a cowl of green. In one hand, she kept her staff, in the other- a glistening prosthetic of everite and dragonbone- Nesterin wielded her spirit blade. 

The road twisted and the hart lurched. The white, petrified twigs in the dirt reminded her of the Exalted Plains and the forests of burnt up dead trees. Except, when she looked closer they were bone shards. 

The wolf was little more than a grey shape in the distance, lurking behind a copse of dead trees.

“I see you, wolf,” Nesterin called out, as loudly as she could, turning her hart towards him. He turned too, and he tried to sink into shadows, but Nesterin urged her mount forwards. “I see you!” 

“You don’t see anything,” whispered a quiet voice beside her. She might have called it Mythal’s servant, but it was too far outside of her ears. 

“Look at how she pictures herself,” the voice sneered. “The emerald knight atop her glorious steed. Do you ride out to save the world, Inquisitor?”

“Such arrogance. Such _pride,"_ said another. 

Nesterin knew better than to start screaming at the distance in the fade. She knew better than to pass out drunk in her tent and go there too. But she’d done them both and the demons had started to sniff around her; Pride, Envy, Desire, Rage. It could have been any one of them. She stank of them all as strongly as she stank of whisky.

“Thinking you matter.”

 “Thinking he loved you.”

“All he saw was a slave.”

“All he saw was a shem.”

The hart was gone. The handle of her blade fell through the air as she felt the emptiness where her hand had been. She was standing in the dirt. Barefoot on the bones as spirits circled her, wearing the forms of elves. A pair of them looked just like the elven girls from camp and they wafted around her, sneering and spitting.

“Half-thing.”

“Half-formed.”

“ _Coward_.”

“In public they raise you up,  _Herald._  But in private...the humans still dearly love to see our people on our knees in front of them”

She felt the open plains stretching on and on beginning to constrict around her. The whole world shifted quickly enough that she was left dizzy and disoriented.

Instead of the Exalted Plains, Nesterin now stood in the dark of a prison cell. It was damp- the walls shimmered with water, and it was cold.

She wasn’t alone in the prison cell either.

In the corner, sitting and chained, was the spirit that she knew the best. Despair sat hunched beside her in a haggard, ragged form.

“When your world burns and your hair burns and your heart burns,” whispered Despair. “He’ll turn his back and walk away,”

And she knew that it was true.

* * *

 When Nesterin woke, her mouth tasted like a cremation and it wasn’t yet dawn.

Her tent was cold and she pulled the blankets around herself.

Instead of waiting for sleep, she made do with finding a spot in her memories. Somewhere she could go to where the tent was warm and she wasn’t so alone.She found herself in a memory of the Fallow Mire (and couldn’t quite believe that things were so bad now that she would think back to that place so fondly):

The air smelled rotten, even with their wards up, Nesterin remembered. Out in the darkness they could hear the corpses wading slowly through the water. To lighten the mood, she and Varric tried picking corpses out in the wasteland and placing bets on who would reach certain points fastest. But it was difficult keeping morale high in the dark, wild place of death.

The dead troubled Solas.

 The dead troubled Solas in a way that it didn’t Varric or Cassandra who were in the party too. Nesterin noticed it at first in the Hinterlands, because she was always trying to notice things about Solas.

When there were merely vacant bodies- the remnants of an encounter with demons or red Templars or the myriad cases of sicknesses and starvation they had passed on the road-his shoulders had stiffened, he’d looked away, jaw twitching with the always admirable effort he made to mask his emotions.

Trouble was, out in the Fallow Mire the dead literally chased after you and that made it a lot harder to look away.

Of course, all that discomfort with death made sense _now_ , but at the time Nesterin thought it just meant that he was kind. That he cared very deeply about things. Even the lives of people he didn’t know, lost so long ago.

She didn’t ask him to come to her tent.

She didn’t ask but she wanted him to, quite desperately. Nesterin could distinctly remember the sound of his hands on the fabric of her tent, shifting it delicately. And she could remember too easily the way her heart started to pound and how her skin prickled all over.

How she used to enjoy aching for him. Back when there were kisses and touches and whispered words against her throat to soothe it.

Quickly and quietly he found his way inside the tent. And he hovered, for the space of a minute, without moving. When she shifted around, pulling her body up to acknowledge him, their eyes had met. He’d licked his lips and said:

“All he saw was a slave. All he saw was a shem.”

They came out of Solas’ mouth. But the words and the voice were all wrong.

She got up, with a mind to take Falon and part ways with the rest of the group. It was something she would have done anyway- so she could gain passage over the sea. And she was determined not to go with the elf girls any further.  The sky was the colour of a dead salmon; somewhere between pink and grey and Nesterin slipped quietly through the camp, trying not to wake any of the other inhabitants.

Revekah’s words, “ _Ma banal las halamshir var vhen,”_ kept on playing in her head.

It was not the kind of complex elven phrase that Nesterin expected a city elf to know- if they even knew anything of the language at all. But the voices of Mythal’s servants told her it was both grammatically poor and not particularly creative an insult, suggesting that Solas would not have taught it to her. The only likely explanation could have been that it was a Dalish phrase.

But barefaced, fire headed, freckled Revekah couldn’t be Dalish.

 _Why not, though? Because she has no_ _vallaslin? That would make you not Dalish, too. A_ _vallaslin_ _can be removed. You know that well enough yourself._

And then, in her head, it was Revekah standing near a pool of water, by night in a shady grove. Solas moved his hands across _her_ face to remove _her_ vallaslin. And then he touched _her_ cheek and called _her_ beautiful.

Nesterin shook her head to shake away the thought. Between Mythal’s servants, her friends, those elf girls and the voices of her dream, there were far too many voices in her head.

But she could never seem to get Solas’ right.

Though she had hoped to move quickly avoid questions from the others and prayers from the chantry sisters, Nesterin was clumsy and slow with Falon’s saddle and her pack. Before she was finished, one of the soldiers- the one with the curly hair- sought her out.

“Herald,” said the soldier boy.

He dropped to his knees in front of her and Nesterin was too well trained to wince. But, oh, even that was a struggle so early in the morning.

“Yes?”

“My name is Perry,” said the soldier. His face had turned a deep shade of red. “I came to the Inquisition when you passed through my family's farmland. I was the one who protected you last night.”

 _You punched an unarmed woman in the face. Your definition of ‘protected’ is a slightly loose one, soldier,_ Nesterin wanted to say. However, she went for the slightly more diplomatic. “Yes, I remember you, Perry. I gather you meant well, so I thank you. But you needn't have intervened." 

 Revekah was right, all she ever did was bend over for humans.

“There was a hole in the sky near the river by my house. A demon ate our cow but you killed it and closed the hole and… _and I think you are the loveliest lady I ever saw_ ,” Perry went, if possible, an even deeper shade of red. He looked like a beetroot. “I want to go where you go. I want to protect the Herald of Andraste. If you would have me.”

She wished he would stop kneeling. He looked the way she imagined humans would do during proposals of marriage. Hiding her discomfort, she turned back towards Falon so that she could finish saddling him.

“I am really very flattered. But I don't think that’s a good idea. It’s just that-- _damn...damn...damn_.” she cursed as one of the buckles gave out on her pack and it fell into the dirt.

“Here, let me help,” said Perry, standing up to more dextrously finish the job.

“Thank you. Look, I’m simply going to the Dalish. To my family. It would merely be a waste of your training.”

“I know. You’re going to convert the last of the knife ears to Andrastism. So the Maker will return to us.”

“No! What? Who told you that?” 

“I thought everyone knew,” Perry shrugged. “It’s not the first time Andraste had the wisdom to name an elf her champion is it? And I’m not scared of knife ears.”

“Perry. What do you think these are?” Nesterin asked coolly, lifting up her curls and revealing her own large and pointed ears. 

“Yes but...but you’re not like the rest of them are you? You let Andraste wipe off your face-thingies.”

 _Andraste didn’t do it_ , she wanted to snap at him.  _An elvhen god did it. The Dread Wolf did it. And then he told me he loved me and that he would destroy the whole world._ _And your god stayed silent._

“Perry, you can’t come with me. I walk the Din'Anshiral. And I have to do it alone.”

Mythal’s servants were happy with her pronunciation, and so they should be- given that she had said the words exactly as Solas had done to her in the eluvian. Being a human, Perry likely had no idea what she meant- but the way his face fell and he looked softly and sadly at the ground made Nesterin wonder for a minute if he did understand.

“I don’t know what to do now there’s no more inquisition.”

 _Oh, Perry. Neither do I_ , Nesterin would have said- if only she’d been brave enough.

“The Chantry sisters are going to Denerim. In your capacity as a soldier of the inquisition you will be their escort. Keep them safe and be kind to them. In Denerim there will be a place for a soldier of your faith, I promise.”

It was another promise that Nesterin hated herself for making as soon as the words left her throat.

They were heavy things to make, not to be shattered and broken. And yet she made them so freely.

“And you’ll stop punching unarmed women in the face too, Perry,” she added sternly. “That’s just a really terrible thing to do.” 

* * *

And then she wasn’t travelling with anyone.

There were no chantry sisters, soldiers or elven girls who might or might not be spies. There was no Cole to interpret, no Iron Bull to make her feel at ease, no Blackwall to cook the best damn meat stews she’d ever tasted in her life. There was no Sera giggling maniacally and making everyone worried about what horrible thing had ended up in said best damn meat stew. There was no Dorian to trade notes about spell casting, or Vivienne to pick twigs out of Nesterin’s wild curls. There was no Varric to tell stories about a big world Nesterin had never known about or Cassandra to make her feel brave and like a leader.

There was no Solas to heal her, to teach her and kiss her and brush his hand against the back of her own.

There was no Solas and for years she had been fine with it.

There was no Solas.

“I’m not alone. I have you.” Nesterin told Falon and patted his neck.  

 _“You drank from the well of sorrows: you will never be alone,”_ whispered the voices of Mythal’s servants.

“Shall we go a bit faster?” Nesterin asked Falon, a little desperately.

He was eager to respond to her urging, entering into a gallop. Nesterin was small and slender so she made for a light load and she wasn’t frightened of Falon’s full speed. She could move just as swiftly when she stepped through the fade and she didn’t care if she fell, so she urged him on further, flattening herself close against Falon’s hide.

Dennet’s farm had been the first time her companions had seen her ride. Solas said she was an excellent horsewoman, as focused and sure a hand with the unpredictable nature of horses as she was with elemental magic. Nesterin could remember being pleased that she’d impressed him, laughing as she and the Fereldan Forder jumped over a fence.

“It’s inherited,” she joked to Solas. “My mother loved animals and my father loved running away as fast as he possibly could.”

When Falon’s hooves hit the earth it sounded like thunder and Nesterin felt like she could melt right into the sky itself. If she could only run fast enough, then she might be able to leave it all behind. Her body, her mind, those damn voices in her head and the promise that she had made too quickly and that had shackled her to a man who had already left her. 

The land around her blurred and for a little while she felt free.


	4. May You Learn

Nesterin was eight when her father first brought her and her sisters to the clan.

 _"_ These are my people;" Nester told his daughters. "They’ll take care of you just like they did with me when I was a little boy, it’ll be a good life." He was very drunk when he spoke to them. Nesterin remembered the stink of a herbal alcohol of his own devising on his breath. She remembered the tremor in his hand and the blood on his undershirt. And she remembered Mamae, wrapped in a cloth deep inside the aravel, her body pressed close to the dead child she’d birthed.

Over long journeys, Cole used to scoop that memory out of her head with ease.

_“Bump, bump over stones and all the time she moves. Moves like alive things. Mae’s face. Mae’s hair. Trapped too tight. Perhaps if I peeked she would smile at me again.”_

How long ago and far away that sad, odd, motherless child seemed.

A little before the road into Wycome, the camp began to take shape. The aravels with their bright yellow sails looked just the same and Nesterin caught flashes of green and brown clothing and the lazy white form of the halla grazing. Strips of meat sat out drying on racks as a hunter strung up his bow and plump children threaded yellow flowers through willow screens driven into the earth.

 _Well, this place is positively dripping in rustic charm,_ said a voice in the back of Nesterin’s head, unmistakably Dorian’s.

Something was cooking on one of the fires, Nesterin could smell it distantly. Clan Lavellan had been a healthy size when she'd left, with a population of around ninety, and whenever they settled there were always the three fires on a constant rotation, preparing food that would keep in harsher times, feeding people in shifts, keeping the children entertained with little snacks and firing the wonky little clay pots they made.

Hopefully, Nesterin wondered if it was bread and boar dripping she could smell cooking. It was an old favourite of hers that apparently no one else apart from the Dalish had taken to because no one else seemed to make it.

 _Pig fat and stale bread? I think not, darling,_ Vivienne might have said. And Cassandra would look uncomfortable as they offered up prayers to Sylaise.

 _Shit,_ Varric would chuckle upon meeting her sisters. _There’s **five** of you, Bullseye? How has the world not ended sooner?_

Her sisters were the first to greet her, of course, exuberantly flying to her side, throwing their arms around her.

Alifanon bounced a plump, saucer-eyed baby on her hip. The niece that Nesterin had never met was slipped into her arm, the chubby cheeks of the infant breaking out into a smile. The others cooed over Falon and made a great fuss of him, stroking his fur and touching his horns in a way that delighted him.

When her sisters looked at her, it felt like letting go of a deep breath. One that she might have been holding onto for years.

Nobody was watching. Nobody was waiting for her to screw up. She wasn’t the rat in a cage any longer. She was _home_.

Over near the fire, Nesterin spotted her cousin, Yawen, and two of the clan’s best hunters. They must have returned recently from an expedition because they were still smeared with drying mud meant to mask their scent. Yawen's lean muscles had grown stronger in the years she'd been away, his black hair was twisted into plaits and pulled on top of his head and his eyes were sharp and glistening.

He looked so...elfy, Nesterin realised. They all did. And judging by the way their arms were folded and how their eyes followed her movements closely, she did not look like one of them at all.

Nesterin inhaled.

* * *

After prying herself away from her sisters, promising to speak with them properly soon, Nesterin sought out Deshanna. It was easy enough; Nesterin found her in conversation with a young man near the enclosure where the halla slept.

Despite the distance, Keeper Deshanna had never really left her; the woman’s lessons were burned into the back of Nesterin’s skull, even. It had been a strict and intensive training under Deshanna: Dalish history, lessons in focus, in sacred rituals and control of the mana that hummed through her fingertips. And all of it always served up with hearty servings of Dalish shame, blame and vengeance:

_“Our culture is under constant attack….”_

_“Think of those who died, bloodied and battered and broken on the exalted plains before you complain about your lessons….”_

Nesterin’s own particular brand of magic had always seemed to reach across the fade and sing out for approval or correction from her Keeper. She’d felt the anchor clash against it sometimes, two elements that both considered themselves very clever and always right in heated disagreement.

It was almost amusing to think of the feeling as Deshanna’s disapproval of Solas’ mark on her student.

In a bitter, terribly painful sort of way.

“Aneth ara, Lethallan,” said the elven keeper, briskly. “You have been sorely missed.” It sounded like Deshanna was scolding her more than anything.

 _Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Lethallan is not a word. Elvhen do not gender Lethallin,_ said Mythal’s servants. Deshanna was not going to get on well with the voices from the well.

Nesterin asked if they could go somewhere private to talk, forgetting that for the Dalish private simply meant four paces along the river, close to a ramada where the hahren were playing dice games, a little behind the aravels. As they settled into the earth, she could still hear the children chattering as they threaded their flowers.

Deshanna’s cold hands curled around her neck and Nesterin braced herself. She had imagined how this conversation would go ever since Solas removed her vallaslin:

_What in Elgar’nan’s name did you do to yourself?_

_Too much time with the shems has flattened your ears._

_Why have you forsaken your people?_

_How could you have forgotten who you are?_

And yet, as Nesterin stood barefaced in front of her keeper, she was faced with only silence. Deshanna’s frown intensified as it crossed from the left side to the right of Nesterin’s face, reading her like a book in another, long lost language.

She didn’t say a word.

Five years ago, Deshanna’s hair had been as black and as smooth as wet stones. Now it was almost moon-white, twisted up underneath her cowl. A fresh scar on her lip was still bright and pink. It stood out fiercely against her mark of Dirthamen, the raven’s symbol seemingly faded. She wasn't much older than forty but it seemed as if last few years had the same effect as twenty.

The troubles in Wycome had just been words to Nesterin, a letter here, a snatched conversation with Cullen or Josephine there in between everything else she had to deal with. They must have all suffered terribly. She should have come home.

“How long will you be visiting with us?” Deshanna asked coolly.

“I…” 

Words rushed up her throat quickly. Words that she desperately wanted to say:

_“You never let me forget that one day I would lead them. When I was a child, I resented you. For keeping me from playing with the other children. For burdening me with a responsibility I never asked for. For never letting me feel anything but different._

_But when I was lost and afraid, I thought of you. Each of your lessons became like a precious stone. I need you to know that I could never have been what they needed without you…”_

“Not for long,” said Nesterin instead. And she felt herself affecting a tone reserved for diplomatic talks with humans who visibly despised her for being the uppity elf who didn't know her place. “However, before I go, there’s something I need to ask you.”

Deshanna inclined her head to at least listen, but before Nesterin could, Deshanna noticed something a little to her left and flinched visibly. Instinct had Nesterin follow her eye immediately, tensed up and hovering close to the fade in case magic was needed.

“Mana Banal! Idiots, not now! Not now,” Deshanna erupted, waving at a woman and two men leaving a tent on the outskirts of the camp.

Nesterin saw they carried something large and wrapped in a cloth. Deshanna roared at them with wild eyes. They looked from the keeper to Nesterin and quickly they retreated inside of the tent once more.

Since the age of eight, she knew the unmistakable shape of a body beneath cloth.

It was callous of her, but Nesterin’s first emotion was relief. A burial meant a lot of work for a keeper; overseeing the preparation of the body, picking out a plot and a tree to plant over the site. There would be a celebration of life from dawn until dusk tomorrow evening, food would need to be readied and there would be prayers to Falon’din. No wonder Deshanna was fraught. It was simply poor timing.

“Hahren, if you’re supposed to be burying somebody then this can wait. I honestly don’t mind.”

“No. No,” snapped Deshanna. “I am sure you are very busy. Do not trouble yourself with us any longer than you have to.”  
It wasn’t the funeral then.

Nesterin bowed her head,“I should have come home sooner. Things were so different but…I hope you know that I always tried to do the best for our people, to be the best for our people even while I was away.”

She’d rehearsed this part. It didn’t make what she said untrue. But she had rehearsed it.

“There’s so much I’ve learned and that I could put to use for the clan,” Nesterin said. “I humbly ask…no I’ll beg, actually, Deshanna, that you might allow me to resume my duties as your first once more.”

The Keeper looked at her and didn’t even stop to think it over.

“No,” she said.

“Just name me your first to allow me to travel to Arlathvhen and speak at the Hahren'al. After that I will stand aside. I’ll-”

“No, Nesterin.”

“Please?”

“No. I have another first. I have no need for you.”

Nesterin was stunned. Of all the hurdles she'd envisaged in front of her, this had not been one of them- and she'd already fallen in front of it.

Leliana had not even seen the point of going back to ask to be Deshanna's First before she spoke at the Hahren'al. "You were the inquisitor, they will respect you for that", Leliana argued. But Nesterin had known better. If she went into Hahren'al expecting a shem title to mean anything, started giving orders and shooting off her mouth about the Dread Wolf, they'd be even more hostile to her. No, she had to do it their way. And that meant going as a First of Clan Lavellan over everything else.

But Nesterin had just taken it for granted that she’d be able to go back to being a First. She wasn’t sure if it was something that she wanted- after all she’d seen and done and what she knew now about the old ways going back to her small world seemed like a very strange prospect- but she had never doubted that Deshanna still wanted her.

If only because there wasn’t anyone else for the job.

“Who’s your first now?” Nesterin asked.

“Another. Who it is isn’t important,” Deshanna replied cagily.

For a horrible moment, Nesterin had to wonder if Deshanna _knew_. If someone somehow had told her about Solas. Or if, in her capacity as Keeper, Deshanna could somehow smell Fen'Harel all over her, upon every inch of her skin that he had touched and kissed and tasted.

Deshanna dug in her heels and didn’t want to move an inch, but Nesterin needed her to. She needed the co-operation of the clans. She needed their advice and she needed their assurance that they wouldn’t fall for the Dread Wolf’s lies. War between humans and elves because of Solas was the worst-case scenario.

“Please, Hahren. The fate of our people is at stake!”

“The fate of our people!” Deshanna let out a chuckle, but she wasn’t smiling. Instead, she looked furious. She got close to Nesterin and poked her once, roughly in the chest.

“We are not your people,” Deshanna hissed. “I can tell that with one fendhis lasa look at you, da’len. Once you wore the mark of the All-Father, but this! This is your own father’s blood writing I see on you. As clear as night and day. It means harellan.”

All at once, a rush of shame came flooding towards Nesterin. And it tasted like an old friend.


	5. My Safe Place

Before she could claim to have known the Dread Wolf himself, Nesterin’s father was the worst harellan she knew. Mamae used to say he was just the restless kind. Everyone else said that he was incapable of telling the truth and incapable thinking about anyone but himself. Nesterin remembered how drunk and sad he’d been when they buried Mamae, and she remembered him not being there in the morning

Once, after Cole had found her memory about Mamae and the aravel, after he had said it out loud, _Bump, bump over stones and all the time she moves. Moves like alive things. Mae’s face. Mae’s hair. Trapped too tight. Perhaps if I peeked she would smile at me again.”_ Solas came to find her.

It was years ago but she could still remember it clearly:

Since the beginning and Haven, Nesterin had known he was watching her closely. It started with the notes she found amongst his things, detailing her progress while she was unconscious after the explosion at the Conclave, progressing to accompanying her on her walks in the green woods around the small settlement.

At first, he kept a respectful distance fitting an older hahren or keeper- like Deshanna might have done if she’d been male- but they spent more time together than she did with the others. She thought he did it out of pity for the lost Dalish girl, then she started to wonder if he did it because he liked her company. After the kiss at Haven she hoped it was because he wanted her.

But Solas had more at stake than anyone in keeping the caged rat from gnawing off her hand and running away.

“Cole means for it to be a comfort,” he said. It was night, and they had stopped at an Inquisition camp somewhere near Crestwood. The fire crackled, she could hear crickets singing out in the darkness and the murmur of the scouting party over their dinner. “But sometimes these things can be difficult to hear.”

There was a little clay mug in his hands and Solas passed it over to her. Steam rose from the liquid inside and she sniffed it slightly. Warm milk. Not quite like Felasera, which was a kind of Halla milk drink that her clan made, served warm and mixed with sorghum, cinnamon and sometimes a little alcohol- but even the smell of it was enough to make her think of home.

“Oh. You worked out that was me?” Nesterin asked, more interested in the milk, in truth. She let her eyes flutter shut letting out a quiet _mmm,_ and as she did so she felt Solas come to sit beside her.

She sensed more than she felt the closeness of his thigh to hers.

“There were contextual clues,” he said. “Cole referred to the bump, bump of an aravel and you called your mother Mae. Like Maemae. An elven word no one else among us would be likely to use. It was an easy enough puzzle to solve.”

Nesterin opened her eyes and raised a brow. “Well done. You’ve cracked the code and impressed the pants off of everyone. Very astute, Solas.”

Instantly, Solas seemed to realise that he’d referred to the bloody death of Nesterin’s mother in childbirth and the memory of transporting her body in the back of an aravel that would stay with Nesterin forever as _an easy enough puzzle to solve_.

“I apologise. I was prying. I shouldn’t have.”

“It’s not prying when Cole announces it to everyone. Or is it? I’m not really sure anyone’s quite nailed the rules yet.” Nesterin laughed, she couldn’t help it. There was something innately pleasing to her about seeing Solas ruffled. It was one of the few times his mask appeared to slip.

That and when she’d kissed him and found the smile twitching his lips and all the burning want in his eyes.

“This is good,” she said of the milk, trying to change the subject and show him there were no hard feelings. His expression of regret didn’t change.

“I didn’t peek. I knew she wouldn’t actually smile at me. But I’m glad somewhere I do remember her smiling. So I don’t mind Cole saying it at all,” she added, to let Solas off the hook. But he began staring at her in a way that she liked much less than his regret.

Flustered, she looked down at the milk.

“That probably doesn’t make much sense. Bit weird. Bit morbid. Sorry.”

The warmth of the smile that broke over his lips was like a cup of hot halla milk, flavoured with cinnamon and sorghum.

“I do not think it is weird or morbid at all. There are many reasons why one finds more despair than hope in the Fade. It is all too easy to blame the world for our miseries but we forget that our nature shapes them too.”

“Speaking from experience, Solas?”

“Speaking as someone who envies your capacity for hope, Lethallin.”

She’d been so much fuller in those early days of the Inquisition. She used to laugh in a high chittering giggle a little bit like a bird. When someone said that they admired her hopefulness, she took it as a sincere compliment. One that made her heart feel swollen and enormous as it sat in her chest.

With his long, warm, healing fingers he gently scraped the side of her face, feeling a curl of Elgar’Nans vallaslin against her cheek. His touch made her feel as tense as stone. 

“You…” his voice was thick. He swallowed and removed his hand. “You were raised by your father,” he said.

“What?” Nesterin whispered.

The light touch of his fingertip, so close to her lips, lingered and the _last_ thing she wanted was to be asked about her father. 

"Your vallaslin." 

"Another puzzle, Solas?" she aksed, slowly un-stupefying, "Because I wear the vallaslin for fatherhood you worked out that I did it out of reverence for the man who raised me?”

Funny man, she'd thought that night. Trying to puzzle her out and imagine her up as opposed to just _asking_ her.

_Because she wasn't real._

“If I wanted to honour my father with the vallaslin, I'd be better off wearing Fen'Harel’s blood writing,” she smirked.

“What do you mean?” Solas’ expression sharpened. "There is no Fen'Harel vallaslin. There would not be..."

“No- but it would be appropriate. My father was a trickster. A con man. A liar. He broke off from Lavellan before I was even born. When I was very small he used to travel around selling halla piss in bottles to shem’len and city elves- he, heh, he called them Dalish love potions and health tonics, can you believe it? And he surprised no one at all by leaving us when Mamae died.”

She smiled.

“So now my only father is the All-Father. And he suits me quite well. Vengence and Fire and everything else under the sun." Nesterin finished, but his sharp expression didn’t change. So she simply changed the subject: 

“That’s probably enough about me. Please, tell me another story about the fade?" 

He told her a story about a spirit of courage who loved the simple, uncorrupted bravery of children. The spirit helped them climb trees and run and run as fast as they could so they were nearly flying. She listened to him talk, and he had made her feel so warm. Warm all over. 

* * *

“Tell me more about Halam’shiral.” said Laisa

“No, when you killed the Sandy Howler,” demanded Mirwen.

“Did you dance with many handsome Lords? What did you wear when you were there?”

“Did you slice its _guts_ out?”

After she left Deshanna, her sisters didn’t give her much time to sit and stew on the insults, whisking her away to a stone grotto that the children liked to swim in. Nesterin found herself being attacked by a barrage of questions, asked to tell story after story until her throat felt quite raw.

They made for the kind of audience Varric would have dreamed to have; laughing loudly at parts that were meant to be funny, gasping in horror at the scary bits and even weeping openly at the places that were sad. 

Her sisters helped her unhook the gold pins at the end of her shirt, and gently rolled the sleeve of her left arm over the place where it had been severed. Gentle hands felt over her scars, touching and tickling.

She had missed them so much.

Mirwen and Bel had their vallaslin now. Bel looked lovely with the delicate swirls of Ghilan’nain along her forehead and underneath her chin. Mirwen, unsurprisingly, had been struck by the macabre pleasure of an association with Falon’Din. 

Nesterin wished she could be proud to see that they were grown, but Solas' magic had taken away her vallaslin and his words had broken the spell of them. Looking at her sisters, she saw how much the blood writing looked like chains. And she wondered how she'd never seen it before.

Laisa though, the youngest, still wore her face proudly bare, despite being twenty-one and old enough by far for her rite.

“I told Deshanna I didn’t think I was ready,” Laisa confessed, “That was nearly two years ago. And the truth is, I don’t think I’m ever going to be ready.”

Nesterin knew that, sooner or later, she was going to have to tell her clan- and the rest of the Dalish about the truth of the vallaslin. Solas had said they were like children, and- perhaps out of spite for him- she refused to coddle them. When the time came, Nesterin decided, she’d tell Laisa first.

Solas would have liked her, Nesterin thought. In the same way that she always suspected he liked Sera, very, very, very, _very_ deep down. She had a rebellious spirit.

“You’re holding her like she’s made of glass. Not bone and Mamae’s tit milk, ay Fatty?” Alifanon bent down to tap her daughter’s cheek and the little girl giggled.

“I don’t want to drop her. I keep forgetting this arm’s gone.”

“Yawen drops her plenty with all of his limbs intact,” shrugged Alifanon.

“I still can’t believe you had a baby with _Yawen_.”

“Neither could he when I first told him I’d quickened. Like babies just happen to other folk. Idiot. It’s not usual for it to happen so fast, but it’s not unheard of- look at our family’s track record with fertility. Aunt Illan was pleased though.”

"I'll bet," said Nesterin. If there was ever a candidate for running off and knocking up a human girl it was Yawen. They'd not been close.

"He stepped up when you left, you know," Alifanon continued. "With all the horrible things that happened afterwards. And when things... changed. He's been brilliant actually."

"As long as he deserves you, that's all I care about."

If she had not gone to the conclave- if someone else had been Inquisitor would Nesterin have taken up with one of the clan boys too? Someone she’d known for her whole life. Who lived in a small world that was warm and without secrets. She would have become round and full with his children. Her daughters would have been fat and red-cheeked. She would have held them close and felt whole.

_Harden your heart to a cutting edge, Vhenan._

She remembered his words and the day she drank the tea. Her pictures of fat and red-cheeked daughters slipped into dust.

“Who died?” asked Nesterin.

“What?” asked Alifanon sharply.

“There was a body. I think Deshanna might have been angry at me for interrupting his burial.”

Nesterin knew her sisters well enough to spot the dark look that passed between the four of them. Honestly, a stranger would have done. But she knew better than to press the issue too much. If she did, they'd clam up like Deshanna and push her away. But if she didn't push then hopefully someone would let something slip.

It was usually Bel.

“She wasn’t…” Bel began- bang on schedule, but Alifanon leapt in over her.

  
“-An old man from Wycome. Nobody from the clan. He knew he was dying and he wanted to play at Dalish for a while. The flat-ears come to us a lot now we’re just outside the city walls. Like our culture’s just some tavern they can visit for a drink and a song and then back home to bed.”

“And Deshanna’s giving this old man from Wycome a tree and a service?”

Nesterin tipped her head. Offering a city elf a full Dalish burial? It wasn’t something she’d heard of before, but it wasn’t bad either. In fact, it was reassuring. 

Bel let out a sob and pressed her hand over her mouth.

“Guess so,” said Alifanon cagily, she got up and took the baby back into her arms. “Speaking of a drink and a song, the baby usually gets fussy around this time and we’ve got to get ready for dinner. We decided to do something big for your homecoming.”

“I wanted to hear about the Sandy Howler,” Mirwen whined.

“I’ll tell you all about it at dinner," Nesterin promised.

* * *

There was Felasera with the dinner.

It was served with a relative feast of boiled grains cooked in vast clay pots, stewed vegetables, spiced meats and fritters of offal. The shemlen, Nesterin announced to the assembled, always made such flavourless food. They threw away the best parts of the meat and left all their vegetables tasteless and bland. Throughout dinner she licked her fingers theatrically and asked questions- Alifanon had briefed her while stewing meat:

_So and so had a bad foot, but a doctor in Wycome is seeing to it._

_What’s her name’s boy just got his_ vallaslin. _He was a spotty, stinky little thing when you left, but now all the girls sigh at the sight of him._

Nesterin hoped that it would distract them from their own questions for her. About her vallaslin, about all that had happened to her in the Inquisition.

She'd also wanted to speak to Bel privately and try and coax out why people had been acting strangely to her since she'd arrived. Her first instinct had been that it was anger and hate, likely born out of her own shame and regret- but that didn't answer everything. Unfortunately, someone had clearly anticipated that and had placed her between hahren who would likely talk her ear off and waylay her all night.

“Look at this, da’len," said Gillia, one of the very oldest of the hahren, later in the evening. The sky had turned black and there was sweet music from flutes and guitars playing, Gillia got close to Nesterin, a lovely smile spreading over her crinkled brown face. “Look.”

Excitedly, her arthritic hands went into the folds of her skirts, and she pulled out a handkerchief. Inside, was a crumbled piece of yellow cake. It was simple fare- nothing like the fussy, frilly cakes she’d eaten in Orlais. “They sold it to me in the town,” said Gillia delightedly. “For you.”

“The girl’s been living in a palace for the last three years; she’s not interested in your cakes,” said a woman near her, when she looked over and saw Gillia offering the cake.

“You’ll get fat like a flat ear if you eat their cakes, Hahren,” said Yawen brusquely from his place next to Alifanon, cradling their sleeping baby in his arms. “Old city elves have no teeth. I’ve seen em.”

But Gillia pushed it towards Nesterin defiantly, “No one has ever let me go into a shop before. I tried once when I was a girl, I remember. The butcher chased us all out with a broom,” she confessed in a low chuckle.

“It’s delicious, Gillia."

Under the sound of the music, Nesterin heard a low persistent moaning from somewhere. It didn’t sound right.

“It’s much better warm,” said the old woman with an impish smile.

And, strangely, the next bite that Nesterin took was indeed warmer, as if it had only just been pulled from the baker’s oven.

She looked at the old woman with her eyes wide.

But Gilia only put a wrinkled finger to her lips and giggled like a little bird.

* * *

When the music ended, the dinner was over and the clan began to prepare for sleep Nesterin tried to find Bel, but she was nowhere to be seen. Instead, she volunteered to take a shift watching the camp and to put a few wards up. Deshanna sniffed and told her such things were no longer necessary- the night’s watch of Wycome protected them too now, and they got no longer got any kind of trouble from the people.

But Nesterin wanted to. It would remind her of the old days. And keep her mind off trying to get to sleep.

When she finished casting the last of the wards, bringing that familiar smell of burning fruitwood and the camp had settled down into a quiet stillness she could still hear the moaning.

It was the halla, she realised. The halla were all crying.

“Nesterin, Ma’lin,” she heard hissed behind her.

Out of the darkness her sister, Bel, walked towards her, her pained expression visible in the darkness.

“They all want me to lie to you,” , she said in a frantic whisper, speaking very quickly. “They’re acting like you aren’t the one person in the whole world who can help us. Like you aren’t even one of us. But I won’t do it, Nesterin. Only harellan like the Dread Wolf or daddy lie to their kin.”

“What is it Bel? What are they lying about?” Nesterin only needed to coax her gently. She knew that her sister was ready and desperate to confess all.

Bel took a deep breath. She looked pained for a second but steeled herself.

Taking Nesterin’s hand in her own, she held Nesterin’s palm flat. Together they watched as lightning sparks flew from Bel’s fingertips.


	6. The Slow Arrow

When the purple glow of the electric sparks subsided, Nesterin was smiling but Bel’s face remained contorted with fear.

“Oh, my Bel. Our Little Many. It’s nothing to be frightened of.”

Bel must have come into her magic while Nesterin was away. Another pang of regret shot through her stomach. Nesterin had been a child when she knew she’d be a mage. Before she knew it marked her as different and the terrible consequences of such power. But Bel was older. She knew the dangers and the prejudices and the burden that it could bring.

She would have needed Nesterin desperately.

“You are late but it isn’t unheard of,” Nesterin soothed. She remembered how Solas had teased Sera with the prospect of latent magical ability. “And once you can control it-”

“-It was Alifanon first, about a year ago,” Bel interrupted, her voice high and hysterical. “The baby was growing in her belly so we wondered if it had something to do with that. But then it happened to me and Laisa, not a week between us. Mirwen was only three months ago but it happened to her too. All of us.”

Nesterin felt her heart drop quite suddenly. All four of her sisters were mages. 

No wonder Deshanna looked so guilty. Clan Lavellan would never abandon its children in the woods like other clans might, but Deshanna also understood their responsibility to the Dalish as a whole. She was planning to send her sisters away. Planning to parcel them out among foreign clans, to be first or seconds or to be tasked with bringing more mage children into the world.

“And it’s not just us,” Bel added frantically. “It’s happened to more than half of the clan. Yawen, Aunt Illan…and that body? It’s _Herran’s_. Mythal preserve us. Herran the halla-man became an abomination.”

“What?”

Nesterin thought of Gillia. Her gnarled finger raised to her lips as Nesterin ate the warm yellow cake.

More than half the clan could mean fifty people. That was enough to fill a small chantry circle. 

There were smaller units of soldiers in the Inquisition.

How? It was impossible....

“We didn’t know what to do," Bel went on. "He couldn’t escape and get into the town. We couldn't let him. The Templars would have come. _It was horrible_ ,” the memory of the event flared up all over Bel’s face. She bent her head and her tears came freely.

Nesterin remembered Herran. He was big and broad of shoulders for an elf, with a kind smile and a round belly. He used to make the cheese and he loved the halla. Of course she remembered Herran.

But she had not noticed he was no longer there.

“Deshanna won’t bury him until you’re gone,” sobbed Bel. “He looks wrong, Ma’lin. He smells wrong. I can _feel_ his wrong even now in a place that doesn’t feel like me," Bel swallowed and launched herself desperately at Nesterin, her eyes wide with fear. "I don’t want it. I don’t want to go to the circle. I don’t want to end up like Herran. I don’t want shems to kill me or make me Tranquil.”

“You won’t. Look at me," Nesterin placed her hand on her sister's shoulders. "It won't ever come to that. I’m going to fix it, I promise.”

* * *

Which was all very well and good to say, but short of tranquillity there was no way to actually strip anybody of such powers. _It had happened to half of the clan. Half of the whole clan._ she thought incredulously.

There was another lofty promise she'd made. They were starting to mean nothing. They were starting to taste like bile on her lips.

Nesterin stayed with her sister until she could be coaxed into a watery kind of sleep, under the stars- just outside of the aravels. Someone had put up a fresh set of wards around the camp, reinforcing hers. The magic smelled crude and a little like fennel seeds- not at all like Deshanna's work. But, Nesterin supposed, it could have been anyone's doing. 

She left Bel's side to find something to drink and came back with two bottles of rice wine- she knew the Hahren were still hoarding alcohol and found it easily enough amongst some of the larger clay pots.

Under the vast canopy of the ink-black night, she sat cross-legged, drinking, listening to the cries of the Halla for their dead steward.

Nesterin shut her eyes and imagined herself in a banquet hall. There were rows and rows of tables, but no feast to be seen. Drapery stirred a little in the still air and grey-faced, almost blurry looking people murmured quietly amongst themselves. Mythal's servants.

There was only one empty chair, and Nesterin walked towards it. As she did so, the murmuring subsided and each smudge of a face turned to look at her. She slid the chair out and took her place at the table.

She felt something inside of her tugging loose. Like a piece of thread pulled out of cloth.

 _"How can half of my clan suddenly become mages?"_ she asked the servants

There was an old, low, chuckle and three voices hissed at once. _"How can half of your people be as the Shemlen and the Children of Stone? It is only a wrong being righted. It ought to please you. Your people are ignorant and ugly and so very low. They can at least try to be better now."_

 _"They aren't ugly or ignorant or low,"_ Nesterin said with gritted teeth, _"And they're in trouble. I need to know how it happened, why it happened, and what's to be done about it."_

There was another low chuckle. She heard many whispers from the many voices of Mythal's servants, all of them seemingly far, far away. One voice, though, came through clearer than the rest. It was a woman's voice she could just about make out the femininity of it- though it was low and cracked with time _"There is nothing to be done about it. No battle that you can fight and win. No question that you can ask and we will answer."_

"Then what questions will you answer?," Nesterin all but roared. "Apart from questions about fucking grammar!"

As she roared, she felt herself being pushed, ejected from her own head and into the night air. It was a supremely disjointing sensation. Her stomach swum and lurched, rice wine and halla milk and cake and her dinner surged up in her throat and hit the dirt with a spatter.

Nesterin groaned, wiping her mouth with her sleeve and looked up. There was a statue of Fen Harel a few paces away from her, she could just about make out the silhouette of the shape in the darkness. It was placed just outside the campground, as per tradition. Likely, there would be an offering of rice or a wooden carving of some kind placed at the dread wolf's feet. She was sure it was made of hard stone, otherwise, she might have contemplated kicking it.

“This is you, isn’t it?” she said out loud to the statue of Fen’Harel. “You’ve been fiddling with the fade for two years and you didn’t tell me? Even when I thought you were finally telling me the truth you were lying.”

Nesterin let in a sharp intake of breath. In the darkest corners of her mind, she wondered if she only knew who Solas was now because it wouldn’t matter anyway. She wondered if events were irrevocably in motion already. “And I still only get the back of your head,” she laughed bitterly at the statue.

She took another sip of the rice wine and lay back on the grass. Her hair splayed out around her in a fan, and she remembered Solas' hands. His hands twisting through her curls, his thumb skating across her bottom lip. On the right side. One of the few places where her face used to be bare.

Her sisters had lied to her too, Nesterin realised bitterly. Her whole clan had lied. They'd treated her like an outsider ever since she came back, and that stung almost as bad as all of the other betrayals.

And perhaps it wasn't just her clan, she thought. Perhaps other elves in other places were changing too.

“The humans will kill us before you get a chance to," Nesterin said bitterly to Fen' Harel's statue because it was true. So many humans hated elves. So many thought they were less than. With fear added into the mix, the only outcome would be mass slaughter. And it would be so easy and neat for Fen' Harel. He could destroy the world guilt free.

Well fuck that, thought Nesterin. The humans and the elves were not going to war over this.

* * *

“A word?"

Nesterin went quickly to Deshanna's aravel, as determined as she was full of rice wine. As such, her manners were somewhat diminished as she barged her way through the tarpaulin erected around Deshanna's private quarters.

Deshanna was still awake, sitting on a reed mat, a pot of tea at her side- but she was not alone. Yawen stood up, placing himself between Nesterin and Deshanna like a bodyguard. He looked down at Nesterin and sneered.

“You stink of alcohol.”

“I want to speak with Deshanna,” said Nesterin. "Privately."

“You can hardly stand you’re so drunk.”

“Bel told me,” said Nesterin, looking around Yawen at Deshanna. She didn't even try to keep the anger out of her voice as she said, “You shouldn’t have kept this from me. Of all the pig-headed fucking arrogance, Deshanna. It was stupid to think you even could. ”

“She doesn’t have to tell you anything," Yawen crossed his arms and puffed out his chest. "I’m her First now.”

“Yawen? You made _Yawen_ your First?” Nesterin gaped. Her idiot hunter cousin. All he cared about was bringing home the biggest kill and pissing contests and looking like a big shot. He didn't have her training on Dalish culture, on lore, on sacrifice and leading people. She was stunned and her vanity was shaken until she reminded herself that she hadn't been First for a good long time and there were greater things at stake. "You should have told me about our clan," she said to Deshanna.

“-And what would you have done?" sniffed the Keeper. "Left us dangling in the dark like the first time? Done the worst possible spying job in the whole of recorded history? Or sent in your chantry friends to round us all up and put us in a circle?”

“I would never do that."

Deshanna turned her head away. 

“ _Deshanna,_ ” Nesterin pleaded, she could feel the tears in her eyes. And then pouring down her cheeks.

“Mythal preserve us,” spat Yawen. "Just get out of here."

Nesterin was about to turn and go when Deshanna said firmly:

“Leave us, Yawen.”

Yawen opened his mouth, before pressing his lips together, wounded and angry. But he did as he was bidden, turned around and left the canopied area.

There was silence for a moment. Nesterin savagely rubbed the tears from her face. 

Deshanna sighed and finally looked at her old First.

“Fifteen hours we sat together. You didn’t flinch once. I drew night and day in blood across your body and I watched you become a woman. A woman I was proud to call my successor. And now you return to us as barefaced as a little girl..."Deshanna reached out to touch Nesterin's face, where the thick mark of Elgar'nan used to be.

“Why in the name of all the gods did you have it removed?” asked the keeper quietly.

Nesterin was going to tell them. She was. She had resolved not to coddle them, she had resolved not to lie. But here and now, drunk and in the darkness, she found that she couldn't.

"I thought it was the right thing to do....at the time," she stammered. Not a lie. But not a whole truth.

"And now?"

Nesterin looked at her feet, "All I feel is shame." Not a lie either. She forced her head up, before saying firmly. "But it's done. It's gone. And we have a bigger problem."

"We?"

“Always we. You taught me to care about these people and you taught me well. I went to the conclave when you asked...I would have poured out every drop of blood in my body for this clan. I still will, if pressed to it. If you’d just give me a pissing chance.”

Deshanna's lips twitched. Nesterin felt as if, finally, she might have come close to saying the right thing. But then the Keeper's expression turned hard again.

“We do what the Dalish always do. Disappear. Vir Assan, vir Bor'Assan, vir Adahlen. We are the last of the elvhenan, and never again shall we submit. I would have taken them months ago," Deshanna continued. "But thanks to you I’m on the council. I have to have _opinions_ on all the sewers in the city. The flat ears of Wycome come and talk with us. We have a little shop in the town. We’re all a holly jolly community out here now.”

“I thought it would be nice for you to have a home," said Nesterin.

“Dirthara-ma. A home? We’re Dalish. That’s just not the bloody point of us, is it?”

“You were the one who always said we needed to get humans on our side," Nesterin shot back. "You taught me that we needed to co-operate. You taught me that a Dalish clan picking trouble is as good as dead!”

“Yes. But I also taught you that minute something goes wrong, the humans are the first to forget. They’ll forget this. They’ll forget you.”

Nesterin would have retorted _no they won't_ if she didn't worry about the same thing all the time.

“ I’m going to get the clan to the Arlathvhen. We’ll pack up nice and slow. Like everything is normal. And after that, we’ll disappear. Back into the fucking woods where we came from. And before you ask, I still won’t take you to the Arlathvhen as my first."

“Because of Yawen?” 

Deshanna didn't answer in words. Instead, she went over to her tea set. Deshanna had likely made it herself, set in the burning fire of a kiln dug into the earth. The fire had made pretty patterns out of the scorch marks and the crafting of the pots themselves was exceptional. Beside the tea set was a folded piece of paper, which she opened and passed, silently to Nesterin. The paper was rough to the touch and quite dirty. The words printed on them were crude, almost like the first attempts of a child learning to write. Nesterin began to read:

CLAN LEVELLAN,

YOUR FIRST IS A SHEM LOVER AND A PROSTICHEWT. WE WILL NOT LET HER SPREAD HER SHEM LIES.

SHE WILL NOT SPEAK AT HARRANNHAL AND DISRESPECT HER LDERS OR THE DALISH LVES ANYMORE THAN SHE HAS DONE.

IF SHE DOES, I WILL SHOOT HER IN THE HEAD. THEN I WILL TAKE MY KNIFE AND CUT OFF BOTH OF HER TITS AND R-

“And you’re sure it’s me and not Yawen they are talking about?” Nesterin asked drily, not willing to read any further. "I'm not frightened of this. I got death threats every day in the Inquisition. And I can handle myself."

She crumpled up the paper and tossed it over her shoulder casually. Varric used to call her Bullseye for a reason; her face was the target, and no one had managed to shoot her in the head yet. "Let me be your first and I will help you and our clan get through this- that's all that matters. "

Deshanna shook her head and rubbed her eyes. Nesterin looked at a woman who had borne the weight of so much responsibility for so long and thought she might never know a person as deeply and truly as she knew her keeper. Even after all this time. Deshanna wouldn't willingly put anyone of her people in danger on the back of a threat like this. She'd dig in her heels and fight and say no, no matter what Nesterin did.

So all Nesterin could do was try and try and try, all the way to Harranhal.

“You know, when your father brought you back and begged us to take you and your sisters in, I very nearly sent him away," said Deshanna, tilting her head with a little laugh. "He had few friends left among the clan and had pretty much exhausted what was left of our goodwill. But then he brought you to me.

“I remember. They were burying my mother and you had me show you my fade steps.”

“I knew you would be a good mage," said Deshanna. "I thought you might even make a half decent keeper if I could stamp your father’s influence out of you. Terrell- who was keeper before me- was a cautious man. Cautious to a fault, by all accounts, though I wish him peace. He sent too many mage children away to be fostered. And then...the blight...and your father ran for the hills...there was so little mage blood left among our clan until you came to us.”

Ironic, thought Nesterin, bitterly.

"I prayed often to the gods since you left us," Deshanna went on. "For you. For us. I prayed that the mages in clan Lavellan wouldn’t die out with you and I. I should have known."

Deshanna laughed hollowly at this, and then she said: 

"This is what I get for my prayers when only Fen’Harel is left to answer them”


	7. Safe Journey

_Leliana,_

_My return to Clan Lavellan has revealed a set of unexpected circumstances._

_Over the course of two years, more than half of my clan has come into magic. Fully grown adults are now able to manipulate the fade despite never once showing an affinity for it before. I worry that your reports of elves disappearing from alienages and servitude are no coincidence. I fear greatly for these disappeared elves. It may be that they are hiding for their own protection. It may be much worse_

~~_It can’t be Solas. I am frightened that he has_ ~~

_It is undoubtedly ~~Solas’~~ ~~the dread wolf’s~~ our old ally's doing._

_They need to be educated but are afraid to admit to it. Not long ago the people in Wycome would have killed them if they found out so many of us were mages. They still might._

_It will be even worse in the alienages. I leave for the Arlathvhen with my clan but I do not think I will be welcome there. Likely it will be silent as a tomb, but I must do what I can._

_Nesterin._

_P.S_

_It should go without saying that your discretion in this matter is vital. Please don't share this information with anyone else before I can figure out what's to be done._

_P.P.S_

_Thank you for arranging the chantry position for company man Perry Sommer. I worry that many more Inquisition soldiers now find themselves rudderless. I will write to Cassandra regarding any possible recruits for the seekers. Are there any other solutions you can think of? We owe them something._

The entire fleet of aravels was prepared for the journey to Serault. This was unusual- usually, only a small fraction of the clan would ever go to Arlathvhen, usually youths of marriageable age who were strong enough to make a good pace. The children and the elderly stayed for the most part- protected by enough hunters to help them.

For the people of Wycome, though, they pretended it was all normal. They tried their best to give off the appearance that everything was fine. But no one in Clan Lavellan expected to ever see Wycome again.

Some were glad of it. The more traditional Dalish folk of her clan who had come to resent the presence of the shemlen and the city elves so close to the camp were pleased to return to something like normal. Others like wrinkled, smiling Gillia had come to enjoy walking the streets of Wycome without prejudice.

One day, close to the end when nearly all of the camp was packed away, Nesterin was approached by a young girl. She was barefaced- probably about sixteen or so, with a thin face and a long black braid hanging over her shoulder. Her eyes were red and swollen, her hand was toying with a glass bead on a chain.

“She said to wear this to remember her by, and that we would be together soon,” the girl informed Nesterin, miserably. “Mamae made me swear not to tell her. But I don’t want to go. Please…please…if you talk to my mamae, you might be able to make her let me stay.”

It was not the first difficult choice Nesterin had been presented with. She’d sat in a throne and judged traitors, thieves and friends. She’d had three hundred and seventeen mothers write to her, begging her to shelter their infant children or to keep their grown sons safe from fighting or to bring their dead home for burial. She’d dissolved the Inquisition, disbanded an army and sent away her best friends. She had told herself that one day she would either cure the man she loved or kill him.

It never, never, never got easier.

 _Harden your heart to a cutting edge, vhenan,_ she heard Solas say in the back of her head. It was easy for him to say. His heart was harder then diamonds, sharper than a spirit blade and it had cut her into tiny ribbons. Nesterin couldn’t blame this girl for wanting to stay in Wycome. She loved someone in Wycome, just as Nesterin had loved in and longed for Skyhold.

“Your family and your clan need you more,” Nesterin told the girl hollowly. “And perhaps there will be a chance for us to come back here. Perhaps your love for eachother will survive this…”

But the girl only sobbed. Wrapping her hand around the glass bead she yanked it off the string. Nesterin felt a tight pain in her chest and she wanted to tell the girl not to do that. Not to throw away her mementoes in a fit of anger or despair.

Nesterin thought of an amulet crafted from quartz, pretty enough to wear at Halamshiral, of a shining leather bridle bag and a notebook, fastidiously filled with samples of dried herbs. All gone now.

She thought of a letter, sent to her while she travelled to the Storm Coast without him:

_Strange that this crowded castle should feel so empty. Tarasyl'an Te'las sat alone on its mountain top, abandoned for centuries, gathering dust and growing moss, sliding further and further into a decline that appeared irreparable. But these centuries of deterioration seem quite insignificant now; for Skyhold had yet to feel the loss of you._

_A week without our vhenan has the wind howling around the parapets. Doorways creak and ache for you…_

Only, she couldn’t remember the rest. She’d burned it.

* * *

 Over the course of the journey towards Serault, Nesterin found herself with forty new pupils. Condensing twenty years of training into a few weeks seemed an impossible task but it was all she could think to do in the hopes of avoiding another twisted, dead abomination like Herran.

Some, like Gillia, were happy with their new-found abilities. Many clearly could only think of the fallen Halla man. She started with forty, but began to imagine the number was closer to seventy as little by little more of her clan revealed their own stirrings. It was honestly terrifying.

_If the demons should come…_

_If they passed humans on the road…_

Nesterin spent sleepless nights imagining up every terrible possibility. But it was those things beyond her imagination that terrified her the most. People and their fear were easy to predict, so were demons…but the ripples of the fade around her clan, the pulse of mana throughout the air seemed as volatile as fate itself.

The children loved it very much.

“Hahren watch,” they would call out to her. “Hahren, watch us,” and they would hop and skip and jump their fade steps, leaving their little tears in the fabric of existence behind them.

“Very good,” she told her littlest pupils, one morning. “But take care on the roads, please.”

For the most part, their journey followed the coast, using the, deep, broad coastal forests for cover. Through the deep groves of hemlock and white pine, clan Lavellan was safe, for a fashion, with only the bears and the wolves to be mindful of. But as forest gave way to marshland and the movement of the aravels were interrupted, the party was forced to take to the narrow boardwalk roads constructed across the fen.

Now and again, there were merchants on the road. Now and again they came across a little dwelling, up on wooden stilts to protect the house from floods and the rising mire. Some of the children, apparently, had grown comfortable on the outskirts of Wycome. They waved at the merchants, who gawped at the passing aravels and their brightly coloured sails.

“You should stop teaching them _tricks_ ,” said Yawen with a sniff after Nesterin had chided her fade-stepping charges. “Now they just want to show off.”

It was noon and the week had been long. A long time walking. A long time without a real comfortable place to rest and make camp. Nesterin had been leading Fallon by the harness, offering rides to Hahren two at a time. She knew Yawen and Alifanon’s baby had been colicky and miserable, that they all must have blisters as big as hers, so she tried to be as patient as she could with her cousin.

“Better they learn properly than fall victim to some tempting demon,” Nesterin said, curling her hand around Fallon’s reigns. “Besides, should push come to shove, they;ll able to get away from danger fast.”

Nesterin used to use it for the opposite reason. Slicing through the fade at impossible speed, she flung herself into the danger as fast as she could, leading the charge, leaving the rest of the party to catch her up or else taste her dust. Solas chided her about it once, when she stepped too quickly for him to cast his barrier:

“Inquisitor, you are aware that you have the advantage of an arsenal of ranged attack spells?” he’d asked her drily.

“Yes. But are you aware I also have a big, cool, ephemeral sword?” she teased.

“Of course. You hold the key to saving the world in the palm of your hand, you have the hopes of nations placed at your feet and an army of followers who would die in your service. But by all means rush into the heat of battle before anyone else can blink so that you might use your…ah, ‘big cool sword’ as you so delicately put it.”

“I said it was a big cool ‘ephemeral’ sword, Solas. That part’s important.”

“You are truly terrible at delegating, Nesterin,” said Solas fondly. And then he added seriously, “You should not try to bear the full weight of your responsibilities alone, vhenan. Such things can be dangerous to an organization. Not to mention the efforts of such weight on a person’s spirit.”

She’d not said anything in answer, Nesterin remembered. Too absorbed in thinking, probably, about his words. About how heavy the responsibility had seemed then, how frightening Corypheus was and how much the mark on her hand had changed her path.

“At least allow me time to respond,” Solas had conceded with a sigh. His hand found hers, interlocking their fingers together. Bringing her hand up to his lips, he planted a brief, soft kiss against her skin. “You are too important to a great many people not to be protected. And you are too precious to me to deny me that particular privilege.”

 _His particular privilege…_ it was almost laughable to think about now. If it didn’t make her feel like crying. After all, Solas could not promise to protect her from himself. And she could never have been all that precious, otherwise how could he have left her?

“I could show you too,” Nesterin offered Yawen, back in the present, away from her memories.

Yawen drew himself up and puffed out his chest,“I’m Deshanna’s First. I only learn from her. That’s how it’s always been done.”

“I think, given the circumstances, we may have to start doing things differently to “always”, Yawen”

“Yes, _you_ might say that- of all people,” Yawen snapped back. “But some of us actually value our customs and want to preserve them.”

“Suit yourself,” said Nesterin as diplomatically as she could. “The offer still stands.”

She gave him the finger when his back was turned. A rude hand gesture she’d learned from Sera, who in turn had learned it from running wild on the streets of Denerim. It was unlikely that Yawen would know what it meant, but all the same, he never saw Nesterin give it.

Instead, he jogged a little further down the caravan of people, towards Alifanon. Over the years she’d been away, Nesterin’s big sister had marked herself out as a more than decent mechanic. It was a busy trip for her and the journey had been quite tough on the aravels. But Yawen came by, Nesterin watched, to lighten her load. He kissed her on the cheek, took the baby from her cloth wrappings around Alifanon’s chest and tossed her in the air.

The baby giggled and clapped her hands together. Yawen smoothed down the fine dark hair on her head. Nesterin buried the pain in her stomach and concentrated on the air.

It tasted different now. The veil rippled like a silk cloth over them all, bringing with it scents of burning fruitwood, tangerine peel, fresh chives and the smell of encroaching thunderstorms.

With their simple courage, the children were the first to grow comfortable with their abilities, but others followed afterwards. She wondered if this was what it was always like for the elves. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad.

Yet Solas had promised that her world _would_ burn.

* * *

 

She got a glimpse of this burning world when they got closer to Serault.

Marshland had given way to flat moorlands of purple heather stretching on and on, the thick forests of their destination far off in the distance _.“We called our journey the Long Walk, for that was what it was. We walked with what little we had on our backs. Some walked without shoes, for they had none,”_ Nesterin murmured to herself, reminding herself of the stories of her people’s flight from Tevinter.

A scout pointed out the thick black smoke first, rising over the horizon like a low storm cloud. As they drew closer Nesterin could make out the smouldering sails of a clump of abandoned aravels at the edge of the woods.

It would not be the first caravan to be attacked in the exodus towards Serault. Dalish were attacked when they travelled in groups, it was simply a known fact. Some towns banned Dalish from even passing through. That the site was a small Orlesian town wasn’t better. It wasn’t Tevinter, but Orlais had a poor relationship with the Dalish- Briala’s presence at court might have changed things in Halamshiral- but such changes were surely slow to reach the outer areas of the country.

“Is it a trap?” a hunter asked Yawen. “What should we do?”

Yawen watched the smouldering aravels, his mouth slowly opening and closing. He said nothing.

“I suggest that a few of us scout ahead,” offered Nesterin. “I’ll go on Falon. Who are the best Halla riders now? Yawen?”

Yawen clenched his fists. He glanced behind him, eyes searching about the crowd of elves. 

Looking for Alifanon and his child. 

“Yawen?” Nesterin insisted.

“Huh? Oh…errr…Dorea and Laurel are good.”

“They’re hunters aren’t they?” asked Nesterin.

“Dorea is and Laurel can wield a bow fair enough.”

“Then they’ll come with me. Since our enemy seems to have a proclivity for fire, we shouldn’t put the children and hahren into the aravels. I don't want to risk trapping them inside something flammable. The rest of our strongest men and women need to stay alert, flanking the party on both sides. And those who know barriers should cast them” Nesterin said.

Yawen hesitated, blinking, frightened.

“You need to go and suggest it to Deshanna,” she prompted him. “That’s what a First does.”

"Right." 

As Yawen went to find Deshanna and relay the plan, Nesterin shut her eyes and felt for the fade. Burning fruitwood, tangerine peel, fresh chives and the smell of rainfall had turned to sour milk and ashes.

 _“What does it mean?”_ she asked Mythal’s servants. They chittered all at once, as usual, but she sifted through the voices like finding a pearl in the sand:

_“The child was angry. And the thing of fire came upon him.”_

When Nesterin opened her eyes, Yawen was at her side once more. With him were two of the halla and Dorea and Laurel.

Dorea was a strong female hunter in her thirties with narrow green eyes, a flat nose and black hair, Laurel was a freshly tattooed young man with dark blonde hair and a strong jaw. Both were marked for Andruil.

“It’s not humans at least,” she told them, rummaging through her bag. Two viols of lyrium sat at the bottom- she’d been keeping them by in case of emergency. Nesterin tucked them both into the back of her britches. “We can contain this. Do as I say and we’ll be able to keep the clan safe.”

“It’s a demon?” asked Yawen.

“An abomination,” Nesterin corrected. “We need to ride out and find it now. Abominations are driven by the desire to make more of themselves. Serault’s only a day’s walk away. If it causes a forest fire…or if it reaches the Arlathvhen….”

“I’ll come with you,” said Yawen. “I can ride.”

Nesterin fought not to roll her eyes. 

“Yawen, I’ve fought abominations before. Hundreds. And demons and Templars and mages alike.”

“Not one handed,” Yawen pointed out.

“I’m not worried about that,” Nesterin dismissed, pulling herself up onto Falon one-handed in order to best prove this fact. Dorea and Laurel also mounted their halla. “I can ride with one hand. I can cast with one hand. I don’t need your help,” she said.

“I was the one who had to kill Herran,” said Yawen darkly, his jaw jumped as he said it.

She knew the haunted look that crossed over his face.Sometimes, at the end, you could feel the humanity fighting through the fade and back into the body. The last hint of fear in the eyes were not the demon's.

And that was the thing that always haunted you.

“Then you know it’s not an honourable thing,” Nesterin told Yawen gently. “There’s no pride or glory to be had in it. Matter of fact is, you’re too important to this clan,” She took out one of her Lyrium viols and flung it down to him, “Lyrium. It will make your magic stronger,” she kicked Falon’s haunches. “Stay with them. Keep them safe…I want my niece to grow up with a father.”

Nesterin urged Falon forwards, in the direction of the burning aravels. The halla Dorea and Laurel rode were no match for the hart, and they left them trailing behind, fighting to catch up.

“Just like old times,” she whispered to her hart. She flung herself towards the danger as quickly as she possibly could. 


	8. Now You Must Endure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woof. Quite a long chapter, this one. I hope you'll forgive me a little self-indulgence. Also, the references to abortion become more explicit here -not graphic but certainly more explicit so please bear that in mind. Thank you, as always, for reading and commenting.

They followed a trail of scorched earth left behind by the child abomination. It led them deep into a wood, their path muddled by fallen trees, knotting roots, sharp rocks and little twisting streams like the veins of a gnarled hand. Beyond a vast canopy of trees, the sky darkened into grey, thunder rumbled in the distance and the rains began.

“Shit,” muttered Dorea as water poured through the gaps in the leaves. It was the hunter in her cursing; a heavy rain stalled the goings of animals in the forest, the constant patter of fat droplets of water upon the lichen made it difficult to hear any movement, whilst the churning and rising of puddles disrupted the tracks made by hoof and paw.

“No it’s good, we’re lucky,” said Nesterin, choosing now to take her dose of lyrium- she anticipated that it would not be long until it would be sorely needed.

With heavy wet hair and clothes, the other two looked at her sceptically.

“Rage abominations have power over fire. If the wood is damp it won’t burn as easily. Nor will our clothing, for that matter,” she added grimly. From experience, unfortunately.

Fire had always been Nesterin’s favoured element. It befitted a girl who had once been marked for the god of the sun, her burning blasts of energy contrasting the cool blue pulse of Solas’ barriers and his delicate, painful, frostwork. But it always put her at a serious disadvantage over any rage demon they encountered in the field.

“What do they always say about fighting fire with fire?” she’d asked Solas once, in the very early days of the Inquisition, gritting her teeth in an attempt to offset the pain of a particularly bad burn. She allowed Solas look at her wounds because his position at least was as precarious as hers.

If she asked anyone else they would only start to question whether the Dalish rat they kept in a cage was up to the task at all.

“Rage demons are equipped with nothing but their brute force, Da’len” Solas instructed her in a low voice so only she could hear it. His tone reminded her of one of Deshanna’s lessons. “The key is to fight the fire with intelligence. If you keep your wits about you, if you trust in the people around you, then the rage always becomes less formidable.”

Using his teeth, Solas had uncorked a potion in a little glass viol. He poured it over her arm and her charred, blistered skin felt painfully cold. She winced and hissed and worried, not for the first time, that the mark was too heavy a burden for her to bear _._

“It seemed pretty formidable to me,” she confessed and wrinkled up her nose. “I need more spells. I need to learn. I need something other than lighting fires. I need to be not so— _useless--_ ” Nesterin’s voice caught as she said the word, gritting her teeth together, angry at herself, angry at the shems for using her and angry at Deshanna for using her and angry at the mark on her arm for getting her into this sorry mess. “I felt so weak against it.”

“We all have our own particular weaknesses,” said Solas, touching the skin on her burn, aiding the efficacy of the potion with a little healing magic.“Rage is not so terrible as others. Rage is a passion, rage is a thirst. With thought, rage can be finessed. With care and attention, it can be put to good use. Use your fire to forge a blade. Something sharp and cutting that will last after the fires have burned away.”

He’d already begun seducing her with words.

It could not have been anything but deliberate.

Fen-Harel needed the girl who bore his mark. He needed her close, needed her trusting him. But perhaps he did not anticipate that she would watch his lips so closely when he spoke in metaphors, following the curve of his cupid’s bow, longing to touch the upturns of that small, wry smile he always seemed to wear around her, as if she were always doing something either faintly amusing or faintly unbelievable.

“Thank you,” said Nesterin, taking her wrist in her hand and inspecting her arm. The burn was healed quite thoroughly- it probably wouldn’t even scar. She looked down thoughtfully for a moment, and then ventured to ask, “What’s your particular weakness, Solas?”

The older elf chuckled slightly and tapped his nose. “Now that would be telling.”

It was, in truth, an answer that still evaded her.

Her reminiscing was cut short by a low, guttural roaring somewhere beyond a thick copse of trees. Under dark grey rain clouds and through the sheets of ran, she could just about make out the glow of fires. Distantly, she heard footsteps through the soft earth, the chink of a sword and the loosing of an arrow. 

And she was just about to signal to her two companions when, suddenly, Nesterin stopped in her tracks and shuddered.

 It was like being overtaken by a sudden onset of vertigo, the trees began spinning, the grey of the sky and the grey of the rain and the dull green of the trees began to bleed into one another. The voices of Mythal’s servants was as loud as she had ever heard them, their talk seemingly suddenly desperate.

 _“Love, hate, passion…Fire in the heavens, and fire along the hills…it’s better to burn, burn, burn than to freeze,”_ she heard a woman say.

And she heard frightened voices, angry voices, voices laced with pain. Tones that she had never ever heard from them before. Drinking from the well had made her a vessel of ancient knowledge, like a somewhat dry encyclopaedia or a dusty tome on a shelf. She’d never been a vessel of emotion before.

Nesterin breathed heavily. She used her indomitable focus and every ounce of strength to concentrate on the leaves, on the rain, and not on the voices. Gradually they subsided, but only by the smallest of degrees. 

“What was that?” asked Dorea, staring at Nesterin. “Fire in the heavens? What does that mean?”

“How did _you_ hear that?”

“You just said it…”

Nesterin frowned. Along with the constant din and now an outpouring of emotion, could it really be possible that one of the voices- The woman’s voice- was hijacking her own?

“It's just something old. It doesn’t matter. I think we must be close.”

She ought to write to Leliana, she needed to locate Morrigan. But she would have to worry about it later, for the moment they had more pressing concerns.

And sure enough, they could now see glimpses of the form of the rage abomination, just through the trees. Again, she heard the whir of a loosed arrow, not shot by Dorea or Laurel, and could make out the form of another, as well as the flash of steel that indicated that they were not alone in trying to fight the abomination.

 _The boy will not survive this. They will kill him when they kill the demon,_ whispered one of the voices of Mythal’s servants, the same female voice that had been so loud earlier and had stolen her own. _But there is another way…_

She saw no reason not to trust the voice. Mythal’s servants were as pure a knowledge as one could find, they were long dead, without agenda, with nothing but their wisdom to pass on. At the same time, she wavered slightly.

 _It’s only a boy. A boy who need not die. And you could help him…_ said her own voice, the voice of her conscience.

“Find cover,” Nesterin told her companions. “Don’t shoot until my say so.”

As they did as she bade them, Nesterin shut her eyes and tried to gather, as best she could, information from Mythal’s servants on the best way to save the corrupted boy.

* * *

 

The two men fighting the Rage abomination were tired. The one fighting close range had injured his leg badly, Nesterin could see, whilst the one shooting arrows was running dangerously low on ammo. They were darker elves, with warm brown skin- possibly Rivani, like Nesterin’s mother had been.

The child abomination itself was a twisted horror of flesh and fire. Its form had grown into glowing muscle, she could see the white flash of a human ribcage that had jutted painfully out of his body. Nothing in the face was recognisably human- more like burnt wood, save for a pair of small, glowing grey eyes. In truth, the eyes were more unsettling than any other part of the abomination. They looked so much like a child’s eyes.

The air pulsed as Nesterin cast her barrier. It might have been the spell she cast the most- finessed in lessons with Solas and practised on countless occasions out in the field. But this time it was different.

Nesterin cast her barrier and it was as though the air had been pulled tighter than pig hide over a drum.  The sound echoed loud and deep through the trees, the ground tremored and a shroud of pure burning white light enveloped her target.

The fighters turned to look at her, as did Dorea and Laurel. Nesterin stood still and stared down at herself for a moment before she realised it wasn’t the potency of the barrier that had caused them to stare at her- it was who she had cast the barrier to protect.

Panting, the child abomination stood still, rendered temporarily invincible by Nesterin’s powerful barrier.

The archer took a beat, barely more than a blink and raised his loaded bow at Nesterin. Dorea and Laurel were almost as fast, pulling their own bows up to the archer. Ready and willing to join the fight, the swordsman followed, holding his blade to Laurel’s neck.

To the outside eye, it must have been an elegant, deadly, dance of the Dalish. Reflexes honed through years of hunting, starving, persecution and desperation kept them sharp, while their knife ears twitched. If a branch fell while they all stood together like this, Nesterin felt sure that it would have been a blood bath.

Even the child abomination seemed to be holding its breath, but Nesterin had actually taken the care to bind it along with casting the barrier. She wasn’t totally stupid.

She just _seemed_ totally stupid. There was a vital difference.

“What are you?” snarled the archer. He had a brown heart-shaped face, a shaved head and a pointed chin with a thin jaw. His eyes were long and narrow and green and, like Dorea and Laurel, he wore the vallaslin of Andruil. There was a look of pure disgust on his face as he regarded Nesterin.

“I can help,” she said.

“Oh yeah? How do you think you’re going to do that? This monster ripped through an entire clan, it needs to be destroyed. And you seem to be protecting it, _flat-ear_ ,” said the archer.

“She’s no flat-ear,” said Dorea. “She belongs to clan Lavellan, like us. And you can clearly see that you and I are marked for the same god. Andruil’enaste, bor'assan’ghilana.”

“Lavellan?” said the swordsman, stepping away from Dorea and sheathing his sword.  Now she could see him clearly, Nesterin registered matter-of-factly that he was bleeding and that he was good looking.  He had yellow eyes, features that were high and sharp and regal and the mark of Mythal spreading out from his temples. His hair was black and thick and long. She could see that it was shiny from much care and attention. A girl, younger and wider-eyed, might say he looked as dashing as an Emerald Knight or even Elvhen of old.

Not Nesterin though, who’d already met one.

 “I know you. They call you Herald of Andraste. You left your clan to play false prophet to shemlen,” said the good-looking elf. “Took your markings and your left arm for the privilege, did they?”

He smiled at her with a crooked grin. Nesterin could tell right away that she was meant to be charmed.

 The archer looked to the swordsman, who inclined his head.

 “As you wish,” said the swordsman. “I expect you intend to enter the Beyond and take on the creature there.”

“Yes,” said Nesterin, her eyes narrowing as she wondered how the swordsman could have possibly known that.

As if reading her mind, the handsome elf pulled back the long vest that sat somewhere near his knees with something of a practised flourish. At his hip was a long, thin staff, made of a light wood and topped with a knot of silvery stones.

 “Would you like me to assist you?” he asked.

“Make sure the bindings hold and watch out for me,” Nesterin instructed as she prepared to enter the fade.  

* * *

 In the twisting dark landscape of the fade, amongst drifting spirits, Nesterin supposed she ought to crack on with finding the child- though she did not know his name or even what he looked like. From the back of her head, though, she suddenly heard a low chuckle.

She tended not to hear Mythal’s servants in her dreams. She did not know if they did it out of respect, or if the fade, with its ever warping realities and strange nature, was an unknown even to an ancient well of knowledge. But now she could hear them.

Or, specifically, she could hear one voice quite clearly.

It was the same low, feminine voice that had spoken through her in the forest and it was much clearer now. Something about the sound of it seemed more solid too- as if she could picture a mouth making round vowels, or imagine a tongue against teeth to add emphasis to the consonants.

_No need to hunt. The boy and the creature will find you._

_How?_ Asked Nesterin. She knew if she lingered any manner of creature might find her eventually, but she didn’t want to fight them all if she could avoid it.

 _Feed the spirit,_ said the voice. And again, Nesterin could hear more emotion in it now too. This voice practically purred her instructions, and seemed to be enjoying herself.

_Feed it what?_

_Rage._

_You mean just get mad at it?_

_Funny,_ the voice let out a low chuckle. _I forget how broken you are. Will you let me help you?_

_I don’t see how-_

_Give me your consent to help you,_ said the voice, suddenly urgent. _Or the child will die. Say it loudly and say it clearly._

“Yes,” said Nesterin, loudly and clearly. It appeared she had no other choice. “Yes, I consent.”

Too late, it occurred to Nesterin that a bargain in the fade was a dangerous thing to make. It could have been a desire demon purring in her head and she had just consented to let it help her. As the shape of the fade changed around her, Nesterin became quite convinced that this had happened, the changing environment a reflection of her body changing, her spirit being forcibly removed from itself.

They’d have to kill her. No doubt about it.

But she was an incredibly strong mage. She couldn’t not be, training under the best mages in Thedas, working with the best arcanists, deepening her understanding of the fade and of the arcane arts with the help of the long dead elves in her head. They would struggle, Dorea and Laurel and the two other elves- and they were already so tired.

And then Nesterin was in the woods.

It wasn’t the woods outside of Serault, she felt sure of that after a moment’s glance. It was not grey and raining here, the trees were of a different breed; silver birch and smaller, their leaves forming a lighter canopy, pierced by sunlight. Here and there, among the path, little blue flowers were beginning to bloom. She looked over and saw an aravel.

At the sight of it, Nesterin let out a small, pained squeak.

It was _her_ aravel.

 Not the aravel she was sleeping in on the journey to Serault with Yawen and her sisters, nor the one she’d used in her time as Deshanna’s First.

It was _her_ aravel,

All of clan Lavellan’s aravels had yellow sails. But this one was a more patchwork affair. It had been mended and stitched and patched here and there. It had been dipped in dye and smeared with paint by little fingers. Around the base, they had carved things, names and messages, silly little doodles, their heights as they grew. On boring days their little fingers had threaded up rocks and beads and dying flowers and she’d loved it so.

It was a better aravel than any Dalish ever had, said Pa.

The aravel that she’d been born in. That their mother had died in. And that their father had left in.

From underneath it, there was a thud. As she got closer she could see a figure, lying on its back, kicking upwards at the bottom of the aravel. It kick, kick, kicked savagely. Nesterin could hear huffing angry breath. The fists of a child battered violently on the earth and then when the kicking yielded no answer from the aravel above, the child let out a long piercing scream.

Fuck it was loud. And shrill. And long. The child had some lungs on it. Inside of the aravel, a baby started wailing. And that’s when Nesterin’s mother got out.

She took a step back, shaken a little by all of the details of her dead mother, presented in such perfect clarity.

But she realised that she remembered her with perfect clarity. She didn't have a portrait or a glass cameo to remind her, her people had been too poor and low for that, but Nesterin could recall her face so clearly. 

She was tall and thin as a witherstalk, like Laisa, with glowing brown skin that suggested places far beyond the Forests they travelled through. Her face was similar to Mirwen's: square shaped and broad, with high cheeks and a flat nose and she was marked for Ghilan'nain. Nesterin thought she saw herself in her mother's mouth. It had a full, hard-bitten, determined set. It was turned down and disposed to a frown. But it desperately wanted for chances to smile. 

 “Nesterin, you stop that. You stop that at once,” said her mother, looking underneath the aravel. “You woke the baby, you terror.”

“Where’s Pa?” demanded a sniffling voice from underneath the aravel. “I want my Pa!” 

“He’ll be back soon,” sighed Mae. The child Nesterin, under the aravels, was not happy with this news and began to wail and scream all over again. Mae pinched the bridge of her nose.

Nesterin remembered this rage. She realised she remembered the cause of it too. They’d needed some supplies and Pa had gone into town. He’d go for a day or two, sell whatever jars of piss and snake oil he could pass off as a miracle cure to poor shemlen and flat ears, and Mae and the girls would set up somewhere tucked away. Nesterin had already come into her magic, fade stepping when she skipped, and Pa had wanted to use her- for one of his many nefarious schemes no doubt. Nesterin had been so delighted to spend time with her Pa, just her and Pa and none of her sisters but Mae had put her foot down.

Hence the meltdown under the araval.

 _Bastard, Bastard, Bastard,_ thought Nesterin hotly.

She’d adored that man, fuck only knows why. She’d shouted at her Mae, who’d died for her children. And Nester, that bastard, had only left them.

She could feel the anger growing in her chest. Actually physically growing- like magma boiling deep below the surface of the ground. Nesterin looked down and briefly, she caught a glimpse of something glowing red underneath her skin.

And then the scene changed shape.

There were more aravels now. Neater aravels with clean yellow sails and no marking around them. Nesterin could see herself again, unmarked and in the awkward bloom of her teenage years. Her eyes and nose were too big for her face, her hair was huge and wild and dry, her skinny limbs were uncomfortably long for her torso and she was engrossed in the business of violently throwing books around the camp.

Then there was Deshanna, her hair was inky black again and her face wasn’t scarred.

She crossed her arms and stared coolly at Nesterin.

“What in Mythal’s name are you doing, child?”

“Leaving,” spat Nesterin. “Take your books and your tomes and all of this shit, I don’t want it.”

“Your books are a privilege,” said Deshanna. “Our people in Tevinter were forbidden from reading. They burned every book that was ever written in Elvhen and refused to teach our people how to read shemlen texts”

“That was hundreds of years ago. That’s not my fault.”

“Elves in alienage’s don’t read. Shemlen guards burn down any building they suspect of being a school for the flat-ears. Even we only have money enough to keep books for the Keeper and the First.” Deshanna bent down to pick up one of the books, smoothing it and holding it delicately. “We read them, we learn them, we listen and we guide the rest of the clan- so that no one ever burns our history again. It’s our responsibility, Nesterin.”

 “I don’t want the responsibility. Find a new First. I don’t care. I hate this place.”

Deshanna’s expression shifted, became slightly slyer, “And where do you intend to go, child?”

“I’ll move to a city. My father did it. I don’t have vallaslin, so no one will ever even know I’m Dalish.”

“A whore in an alienage. That seems very fine. Very fine.”

“At least I’d be free. No more books, no more lessons, no more Shartan or Emerald Knights or Fen bloody Harel.”

“Until they found out you were an apostate and locked you up in a circle.”

“I’d let them make me tranquil,” snarled Nesterin. “I don't care." 

She’d only wanted to go on a hunting party, Nesterin remembered. There were huge amounts of druffalo heading towards a breeding ground and the party would track them for four days. Druffalo were easy to catch and the older hunters had allowed the younger to go by themselves. There’d be swimming in lakes, stolen bottles of rice wine and the first tentative steps into romantic activity.

But of course she couldn’t go. She could barely lift a bow because Deshanna had never let her. And none of the other young people thought she was any fun because the only thing she knew how to talk about was Dalish history. She didn’t even _talk_ like the rest of her clan, thanks to Deshanna’s insistence that she be able to read immaculately and without fault aloud in both elvhen (what remained of it) a _nd_ common.

Nesterin felt another bubble boiling for that strange, angry teenage girl.

It was a lonely life to be a First. She’d heard stories of Merrill, Sabrae Clan’s old First from Varric and Hawke and no wonder she ended up doing what she did. At best you were an outsider even amongst your own family, at worst you were passed off to strangers. The red in her chest burned brighter and hotter, emitting a dim but slowly growing light.

Again, the fade shifted around her and she was in her quarters at Skyhold. Outside, the sun was setting over the mountains, bathing the room in a warm glow. Colours from her stained-glass windows danced along the floor and Nesterin saw herself, hunched up over her desk, pinching her nose, trying to read a letter.

There were footsteps on the stairs and the door opened without a knock or a voice on the other side. Nesterin watched herself tense up like a feral cat in her chair. She saw that this version of herself was hollow-eyed and gaunt looking, her wild curls had been forced back into a thick braid and she was freshly barefaced.

The memory was fresh enough in her mind that Nesterin knew how this would play out

 “ _Solas, the University of Orlais has requested samples of Lauzerite for a geological study. You will be provided with a small escort of inquisition soldiers and are expected to leave for the Hissing Wastes immediately.”_

Solas entered the room, reading from the orders that Nesterin had written and signed that morning. In truth, she had been waiting for him to come to her ever since she’d had them delivered to him. It was a combination of bitterness and spite and the simple desire to just see him again. Here, in her room, the way it had been before.

But those times had been warm and exhilarating. He’d gaze over at her with such love that half the time he looked as though he were drowning in it, and the other half of the time he looked as if he was only barely struggling to stay above the water.

Now, however, his face was only icy cool. “You can’t possibly be serious about this,” he finished, placing the note on the desk in front of Nesterin.

“I am,” said Nesterin, showing she could be just as icy cool as him. “The Inquisition is committed to our relations with Orlais and to aiding with its research any way we can.”

It wasn’t true, of course, she just wanted to press his buttons.

She’d been doing it for weeks, sending Solas out on herb collecting missions and to scoop up rocks around the Hinterlands and the Iron Coast.

It was partly because the last time they’d been together in a party, she’d gone through the agony of Cole dredging up her thoughts and of everybody gaping at her face and then at Solas and then back and forth and back and forth.

It was partly because she couldn’t bear looking at him for too long without _wanting_ him.

But it was mostly so she could remind him, day in and day out that he’d hurt her, and make sure that the rest of the Inquisition knew it too. Nesterin had to wear her face bare, for all to see, had to look at herself in the mirror and be reminded constantly, Solas deserved the same treatment. She boiled all over with wrath and rage.

“You can go now,” added Nesterin, she flicked her fingers lazily towards the door. “I have letters to write and I know how much you hate distracting me from my duty.”

Solas would not be moved, “You stand on the brink of battle with Corypheus and you decide now, _now_ is the perfect time to send me to the Hissing Wastes? I’ve seen the requisition lists and I know you’ll set off long before I can get back!”

“You might enjoy the trip. Lots of time alone. Plenty of opportunities to make friends with spirits- since you seem to hate people so much.”

 “How can you behave so childishly? These past few weeks, I have gone where you sent me. I’ve stomped through the Hinterlands on requisition after requisition like a pack horse to give you whatever distance you required-”

“Oh how absolutely fucking noble of you,” Nesterin finally snapped. “How kind of you to finally start giving a damn about my feelings. _I_ sent you away on _my_ orders. Just like I’m doing now.”

She battled with herself for as long as she could, staring up at Solas as resolutely as she could manage. She’d taken on his will in the past and convinced herself she’d won, with each kiss and smile and gust of laughter she’d won. But now she was bloodied and battered and so so very tired.

“So you have to do what I say, Solas. For once.”

Nesterin put her hand over her mouth, she bit down. But there were tears forming in her eyes, swelling like a river about to burst through its banks. Water hit her cheeks and slid down her chin.

Solas deflated, lost all of his coldness, and looked just as wretched as Nesterin felt.

 “I…have behaved terribly towards you, Inquisitor,” he said quietly. “And I understand the instinct to hate me for it. In truth, I hate myself too. But if something happens to you and I’m not there…”  

The Nesterin who was watching her memories unfold before her knew he was lying and yet it broke her heart to hear him talk like that. He must have thought there was still enough time to recover his orb. He was readying himself to enter the heavens and tear them open…and yet she wanted so hard to believe that he’d gone into their final battle only to protect her. Because he loved her.  That rage bubble shone brighter, grew bigger than ever before. She could feel the heat in her chest spreading out through her veins, travelling to her fingers, her face, to the top of her ears and the bottom of her toes.

“How many more of these do I have to watch?” Nesterin called out as the fade shifted around her. Her cheeks were slightly damp and the heat from her body was almost overwhelming.

 _One more should suffice, I think,_ said the low woman’s voice. And the scene shifted once more.

It was still Skyhold, it was still her room. But the warm evening had been replaced by cold night. Only the lightness of the white moon shone in through the glass now and Nesterin could see herself on the floor, balled up near her bed, shredding papers.

Their fight about the Hissing Wastes had been the last time she and Solas had been in her room together. The last time she’d seen him was amongst the rubble of the Temple of Sacred Ashes. He’d been picking through the shattered pieces of his orb and he’d asked her to remember that _what they had was real._

But now that he was gone, what they had only felt like a dream. And the cold light of day was hard and cruel and frightening.

Nesterin didn’t want to see this memory. Not even a little bit.

She’d worked her way through a bottle and a half of wine from Skyhold’s stores. She’d read all of Solas’ letters before she started shredding them. And then she’d made the tea.

Mugwort, witherstalk and felandris, diced into small pieces and stewed for hours until it made a mixture that looked like pond scum and tasted of nothing but decay.

She’d been warned of side effects; vomiting, dizziness, hallucinations. But aside from that, the herbalist had assured her, she would be in no danger.

It was only fatal to the child inside of her. By daybreak, there would be no traces of it.

Nesterin had never felt a rage as pure as the one she felt that night, she called herself stupid, over and over and over.She sobbed from her place on the floor, loudly and violently, with all the force of a six-year-old on her back, screaming for her father

She cursed herself for not wanting the child. It was against her heritage, her culture and her teaching but she would not burden herself with the pitiful stares of others. She could not forget her duty to the Inquisition and she could not forget that the combination of the mark and the child may well kill her in labouring. Just like her mother. 

She cursed herself for being so frightened of the tiniest of swellings beneath her skin, just a little life that did not know it was so scary, and for being stupid enough to let it happen in the first place.

And yet she cursed herself for opposite…for _wanting_ the child. Cursed herself for the dreams of Solas returning and being bound to her forever because of it. Sometimes she saw flashes of wide grey eyes, upturned lips and fat cheeks. She thought of a quiet, wandering life. She and Solas exploring Thedas and history and the fade, watching their child grow.

The bubble of hate in her chest swelled yet bigger and Nesterin could feel it pressing on her heart. Through her clothes, the bubble began to spark and buzz like the anchor had done when it was at it’s worse, only instead of green lights, it glowed a hot red.

Looking over at herself, she was still sobbing in her memory. Amongst all the sobbing, Nesterin heard the heavy exhale of breath forming a sad sigh. She looked over and pulled back gasping,

He was there. In her memory. Reaching out to touch her hair as she lay crying on the floor.

He looked thin. He was wearing a thick pelt of furs over his shoulder but underneath he looked diminished. She could see the circles under his eyes and the fresh indentations of weeks’ worth of frowning. How different from the man in the crossroads he looked, from the man who’d stood tall and proud in shining steel, eyes glowing with a terrible power. He looked like her Solas and nothing like the dreaded Fen’Harel.

 _“Solas,”_ she breathed out.

The bubble in her chest exploded, bathing the world around her in a rush of orange and red and white. There was wind pulling on her face and tears streaming in her eyes as she tried to remain standing. But the crushing pressure forced her to her knees and the fade began to warp around her once more.

* * *

 

There was rain on her cheeks, soaking into her clothes and hair.

She blinked and she was back in the forest, surrounded by Dorea and Laurel as well as the two unknown elves. The dark mage leaned over her, a knot of worry on his face as he extended his hand to help her up.

Woozily, but immediately, Nesterin looked over at her barrier to make sure it had worked. Inside of it, laying still but breathing heavy was  the form of a small elven boy. Just as she’d been promised.


	9. Creators Protect You

Shivering and small on a spot of burned up grass, the child could not have been more than seven years old. He had a little thatch of yellow hair atop his head and dirt smeared along his round face. Nesterin knelt beside him, altering her voice slightly so that it was as soft and as warm as she could make it. “You’re safe now,” she told him. “Very very safe.”

His grey eyes were wide and round, staring at somewhere in the middle distance. She’d seen it in soldiers before, after a confrontation with a demon of terror or a mangled red templar- it was a terrible state of shock, causing the body to shut down and the mind to will itself far away.

In these situations, Nesterin often thought of what Cole would do and tried to imagine herself in the place of the boy. _Trapped in the fade. Having to watch as the demon wreaked its havoc. Burning, burning ,burning._

“Do you know about the Emerald Knights?” asked Nesterin.

Slowly, the boy nodded his head.

“Thought you might. But I bet you don’t know that I’m a knight too. I am. And I can prove it... what’s your name?”

She watched the boy swallow but received no response. Behind her, one of the men told her that they should head onward, towards Serault before the woods became dark.

“Mine’s Nesterin,” she went on to the boy. “Would you like to see something good?” Going over to Falon, she dove into her pack and went fumbling for something with her one hand. “Most knights carry swords, and I do too, but mine is much easier to carry. Look.”

Nesterin brought out the hilt of her spirit blade, crafted from silver, lazurite, wisp essence and bound with a small, sylph-like spirit. She’d crafted it herself- well, with more than a little help from Dagna and Harritt- and been very proud of it too.

A memory of Solas in the rotunda came back to her quite easily when she thought of her blade. It had been the two of them, spending an evening alone together, as they often did. There was a little fire burning to stave off the cold blowing around the high stone walls, a little wine taken from the kitchens and a small plate of cheeses and breads to pick at for an evening meal.

When she’d shown Solas her newly crafted blade, he had taken it from her, balancing it upon his palm to best examine the work.

“This is quite beautiful,” he said as he studied the hilt, again wearing his half-amused, half-bemused sort of grin.

“I know,” said Nesterin proudly, “I’m clever with my hands.”

It wasn’t the wine making her flush,  it was the realisation of what she’d just said. They’d already kissed in her dream of Haven, but he’d asked her for more time to think and she was trying her best to respect his wishes. It was proving difficult not to flirt with him though, either accidentally or on purpose. She was going to stammer that she’d only meant that her clan made a lot of pottery and that many of them wore the vallaslin of June for a reason. But then she’d caught his eye and she’d seen his warm- honestly almost burning- gaze and she knew it was fine to say.

“That you are,” he acknowledged smoothly.

Not for the first time, certainly not for the last, she thought about the dream. About her first, clumsy, stumble into romance as she darted forwards to find his mouth.She thought about how he’d been slow to respond, as he was with her barriers when she fade-stepped into battle, but then how he’d caught her. He’d caught her and he’d kissed her, once, and then once again, deepening their kiss, touching her hips, her back, her hair, her neck with frantic desire.

She looked over at Solas and wondered if he was remembering too.

“Nice grip,” Solas announced, bringing them both out of memories of the fade and back onto the sword. “Lovely fretwork. Intricate. _Opulent_ even.  You say you’re Dalish, but I say you must secretly nurse an affection for Orlesian dramatics…and shiny things,” he teased.

“Oh, _ha-ha_.”

She liked the way he touched her hilt, gently running his fingers across the whorls and curlicues she’d taken so much time to fashion. 

“From what I know of Spirit Blades, you’ve bound it with a willing spirit,” he said.

“Huh? Oh. Yes…is that….is that alright?” she asked, chewing on her lip. “It’s not…my spirit slave or anything?”

It was an image that had troubled her. Commander Helaine had insisted it was the way to do it and she’d had her heart set on becoming a Knight Enchanter ever since the option had been presented to her. _Like an Emerald Knight,_ the child in her, the one who’d grown up on tales from Deshanna had squealed with delight. But that idea of the spirit...bound in a sword, trapped in metal...it seemed like a terrible fate for all she knew of spirits now.

“The spirit chose you. It must have deemed you worthy. I don’t disagree. Do you know the nature of your spirit?”

“It was only a little wisp. Too small and impressionable to be much of anything yet. It came up and twined itself like a cat around my legs when I was with Dorian and Cassandra in the Fallow Mire,” she smiled at the memory. Solas looked at her with a strange furrow in his brow and she caught him doing it. He did his best to rearrange his features.

“Then you’ll be a very good influence upon it. It is quite a fine fate for a wisp, don’t worry. A wisp from the Fallow Mire could have easily been corrupted by all the despair and decay of the place. And, when your fighting days are over, I daresay we’ll break the bonds and find a beautiful spirit of Hope or Wisdom or Justice emerging.”

 _We?_ She wanted to ask. But instead, she settled for saying drily, “Fighting days over? That sounds dull.”

In the present, Nesterin invoked her once-wisp companion and bade it channel mana into a blade. Light came forth as it had done so many times before, erupting from the hilt and emitting a bright glow. The small boy gaped and whispered, “Wow,” to which Nesterin responded, “Right?”

She wondered whether Solas had been right, that she had been a good influence on her spirit friend. In all honesty, this was the first time since losing her arm that she’d even had any cause to use her spirit blade. It prickled from underuse and the burning light it emitted seemed somewhat duller now. In all honesty, she ought to break the bonds on the sword now, even if her fighting days were far from over.

But then, what if only a spirit of despair slipped out?

The boy reacted to her just as she’d expected. No little boy could resist an apparent knight and a big cool ephemeral sword. He told her in a hoarse voice that his name was Hazel and then Hazel consented to Nesterin healing his wounds, to a little sleeping draught the darker mage had on his person and to being helped up onto Falon.

Nesterin pulled herself up onto the hart behind him so that she could keep him from slipping off as he slumbered. She asked Dorea and Laurel to head back to find clan Lavellan and told them that she would go on ahead to make sure Hazel’s people- if they were at the Arlathvhen and if they still lived- knew that he was alright.   

The two new elves offered to accompany her, they had come from the Arlathvhen and assured her it wouldn’t be far. Falon found a broad path amongst the lichen, one with fresh tracks pressed deeply into the earth to indicate a stream of aravels had passed that way not too long ago. Nesterin rode and the other two walked, together in a small party through the deep woods.

* * *

 “He changed before our very eyes. Without bloodshed, without pain. The demon was just gone. I’ve never seen something like that happen before!” said the handsome elf, apparently incredibly impressed with what had happened with the boy. “How did you defeat it?”

“It gorged itself to death in the fade, I think,” said Nesterin, though in truth she didn’t rightly know. It had been the woman from the well really. “I fed it my rage and it was overwhelmed.”

“That’s a lot of anger,” added the archer, “But I suppose you’ve had to spend more time with shemlen than anyone should have to tolerate.”

At that Nesterin felt a defensive flair for her friends, “That’s not fair. People are the same everywhere. Humans, dwarves, city elves-pauper or prince, some are good- wonderful even- and some are bad.”

“Hmm,” said the archer. Which was probably the best she could hope for.

“You need to speak about this at the Arlathvhen,” said the mage elf, still hung up on her demon removal. “This knowledge will be of vital importance, especially now.”

Nesterin raised her eyebrows. The _especially now_ made her wonder if her worst fears could be confirmed- that it wasn’t only Clan Lavellan that had experienced a strange influx of magical ability. “Will it?”

“Of course. You’re a mage aren’t you? I know I’d feel safer knowing there was an alternative to possession by a demon.”

“I know…I was merely wondering why you said especially now. Are there many mages in your clan?”

The archer snorted “Are there many mages in your clan, Elandrin?” he repeated, amused.

“Your name’s Elandrin?” Nesterin asked, a little taken off guard. Speaking of Emerald Knights.

“Yes, I know,” laughed Elandrin, he even flicked his dark black hair over his shoulders. Nesterin winced slightly. “I believe my mother wanted me keenly aware of the dangers of pretty shemlen girls. This is Alloran Chief hunter of clan Uthevhen and I am Elandrin Keeper of Clan Isala”

“Uthevhen?” asked Nesterin, ears twitching with remembrance as the clan was mentioned. “My mother…”

Before she’d met her father, Nesterin’s mother had belonged to clan Uthevhen. She could dimly recall her mother telling her stories about the bazaars at Llomerryn and of sandy white beaches and swimming in crystalline blue bays. Nesterin was pretty sure that, as a child, she’d thought her mother was a lunatic to give it all up in favour of tramping around the Free Marches for love of all things.

“We have a great-grandmother in common, I think, lethallan,” said Alloran with a nod. “I apologise for the arrows, I did not recognise you at first or else I would have never threatened my kin. Uthevhen, at least, is proud of your accomplishments. Your mother, Aesia, is remembered fondly- they say she was braver on the back of a halla than any other member of our clan.  Her influence shines in you.”

“Ma’lin,” beamed Nesterin, thankful for such a memory of her mother. “Good to know you. Where is the rest of Uthevhen? Are they safe?”

“All at the Arlathvhen. We Rivani dalish live perilously close to the influences of the Qun, as your mother may have told you. It was…prudent…for us all to come this year.”

More mages, thought Nesterin. Surely.

“And Isala?” she asked Elandrin.

Elandrin smiled and waved his hand in front of him,“It’s all here”

“What?”

“They say my clan has been cursed for a hundred years. So I’m the only one left in Clan Isala.”

Nesterin looked down to look at Elandrin and he didn’t look like a man who was cursed. In fact, he was beaming brightly, showing off the dimples in his cheeks and the bright, almost unsettling shade of white in his teeth. And since Nesterin couldn’t think of anything to say, Elandrin went on theatrically,

“Every member of clan Isala will die before they are due, so the curse goes. They will bear no children. Their steps will be light upon this earth. And we have stepped lightly. So lightly that My Keeper Glennis died two years ago and now only I remain,” he finished, with a flourish. It was a tale that he’d clearly rehearsed and told on several different occasions, and one that he relished telling, if his smile was anything to go by.

“Why not merge with another clan?”

“They wouldn’t have me and I wouldn’t inflict myself on them. I carry the curse of Isala as sure as I am its Keeper. It would only poison and consume another clan.”

It sounded, frankly, like bullshit, Nesterin decided. But if he was a spy, then he was surely the worst one yet- showily handsome, overly theatrical, and more than a little bit vain. Then again, he may have had training as a bard- he fit that mould quite nicely.

“How do you live? Are you alone?” asked Nesterin.

“No, no. I came here with clan Uthevhen after many months of visiting with them while their Keeper was with child. I am lucky to travel with many different clans. I help Keepers perform their tasks, send messages, steward fostered mages to their new homes.”

Nesterin didn’t know if she believed him yet. But Alloran was Uthevhen, he knew her mother’s name and that she rode the halla and Nesterin felt she could trust him, while he, in turn, seemed to trust Elandrin.  

“That seems...so lonely,” she said.

“I am happy. My Keeper was a good man,” Elandrin blinked and for a moment he dropped his flashy veneer and his smile got slightly sad and pained. “I was born into clan Ishmorath.”

“ _Oh_.”

No further explanation required for Nesterin. Ishmorath was an infamous clan. Infamous among Dalish and human alike. It might have been Cullen who’d told her about the stories human parents used to scare their children with; about Dalish savages with painted faces who robbed farms, hobbled cattle and stole babies from their cradles to boil in big stew pots. Those stories, she remembered thinking, were either a desperate people’s history, human prejudice or an approximation of clan Ishmorath. Whether they really boiled babies, she couldn’t say. But she knew they stole, she knew they threatened villages, she knew they gave the Dalish a bad name as a whole.

“Unlike them, I have no taste for robbing and murdering shemlen. As a mage, they might have wielded me as a weapon against men, women and children alike. Keeper Glennis taught me stories instead. I live to preserve them. When the Arlathvhen ends I will take a mage boy with me. And he will learn too.”

“Why not let the curse die with you?”

“Isala is tainted but that does not mean it is not worth preserving,” shrugged Elandrin.

“You do realise that this all seems absurd,” Nesterin couldn’t help but say. “What kind of magic could possibly keep that curse in force?  You can’t really all die young with no children.”

“Says the shemlen spy who left her people to play prophet for the Maker.”

“Is that really how they see me?” Nesterin asked, suddenly feeling quite despondent.

“You went to the conclave as a spy for your keeper and emerged miraculously as the only survivor, for reasons we cannot fathom. You vanished and came back without your Vallaslin, again we know not why. Some say you were converted. The shemlen look at you like some kind of prophet. I heard it sworn down your markings were removed by the dread wolf himself. It’s a tale that smells faintly of lies and deceit. Our people are not very sure what it is you believe in.”

Put like that, Nesterin could understand why her reception- even from her own clan- had been a frosty one. She had human all over her now, alright, from the way she styled her hair to the boots on her feet. She’d learned how to eat at an Orlesian dinner table and what gift to bring a Nevarran noble on a visit. Servants had attended to her needs, she’d travelled in carriages lined with velveteen, she even knew a chantry song or two now, Mythal preserve her. And she also knew the truth…

The truth about her people that would change them forever.

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me….But, ah, why was your vallaslin removed?”

“Which would you prefer? Andraste or Fen-harel?” 

He thought for a moment, “Fen’ Harel. Better the gods you know, I say. If you’re going to betray your own people, you might as well do it in a language we understand.”

Well, Elandrin would be happy to know that he’d guessed correctly, Nesterin thought.

Even though, for her, it had never been Fen'Harel. It had only ever been Solas. Solas who'd touched her arms and guided her onto the soft earth, working his magic along the surface of her skin. It had tickled like fingertips, it had kissed the left side of her lips. He’d called her beautiful. She’d told him she loved him. And then he’d ended it.

Sometimes she still wondered why he’d done it that way.

Why he’d needed her bare to break her heart.

Sometimes she wondered if he meant it to be a kindness. A symbolic freeing from her slave markings before he freed her from who he was and all of his lies.

Sometimes it seemed like a strange act of desperate cruelty from a wild animal backed into a corner.

Mostly she just didn’t know.

* * *

 Little by little, the forest began to clear. As it did, they began to hear the sound of distant music, of horns and pipes and the rhythmic beating of drums. She could see smoke from hearths and smell roasting meats. Now and then, through the trees, she caught flashes of bright colours from tents and sails and jolly costumes.

She couldn't help but feel entranced by the prospect of so many Dalish all together and a wave of nostalgia flood over her as she remembered her last Arlathvhen. Over the course of a week, Nesterin must have fallen in love approximately fourteen times. It was a heady week of music, dancing and slightly histrionic new emotions. 

It must have been the same for her two companions because when a branch broke, nobody paid it any mind. When the wind sounded a little like a hitching breath, nobody caught it. When feet trod in the dirt or onto the branch of a tree, the sound passed them all by.

It wasn’t until the strange new elves emerged from their places behind brush and hedgerow and rocks, holding spears and knives and bows, that Nesterin knew they were there.

There were ten of them, she could see. Perhaps more yet lurked in the trees. All of them were dressed in brown and green to merge with the foliage around. They had mud on their faces, leaves in their hair and dark black vallaslin obscuring their features. All she could see were the whites of their large shimmering eyes. The effect was quite frightening.

She clutched the child close to her but had no hand to spare to cast a barrier. Elandrin and Alloran however, did not seem too perturbed. Elandrin didn’t cast or pull out his sword and Alloran didn’t bother to nock an arrow.

“Are they with you?” asked Nesterin.

“Stop there. Hold up your hands,” said one of the elves. She lept down from a branch with extraordinary grace and came up to stand in front of Nesterin and Falon, pointing yet another arrow in her face.

“En'an'sal'en. We are friends,” said Elandrin, smiling his bright smile and fixing his shiny eyes upon the girl with the arrows. Nesterin was pretty sure he winked at her. “We are returning to the Arlathvhen. After saving an innocent lad from the clutches of a terrible demon. I’m Elandrin of the Isala clan and this is Alloran of-”

“Not you. Her,” said the female elf impatiently. “You have to surrender the harellan. The shem’s false prophet.”

Nesterin was approximately one hundred percent sure that she was the harrellan the other elf was talking about.

“To whom?” asked Elandrin, skeptically.

“To the council of keepers. They want her to stand trial.”

“I am Keeper Elandrin of the Isala clan. So I’m assuming that I am part of this council of keepers, though honestly I have never even heard of such a thing. What crimes is she on trial for?”

“Treason.”

“Treason!” scoffed Elandrin. “This isn't a shemlen court. There’s no such crime. Nor are crimes ever tried at an Arlathvhen. This is not how we do things!”

“Well, we was asked to take her,” shrugged the female archer. “So I guess we’re going to take her. There will be a trial so it’s all fair and whatnot. She’ll be allowed to say her piece and defend herself in front of the Dalish people.”

Elandrin was about to argue, but Nesterin stopped him.“It’s okay. I’m going to step down from my mount now. But I have a sleeping child with me. Allow me to pass him to my companions”

The female shrugged. She seemed a little disappointed that Nesterin had given up so easily and more than a little bored of the whole interaction. Nesterin’s attention, however, had been piqued by the promise of a trial. Where she would be required to defend herself in front of the Dalish people.

It was the best opportunity she would get, Nesterin figured, to send a message to the Dalish and possibly stand a chance of them believing her. If she had to endure being shouted at by a few more keepers than Deshanna then Nesterin figured she could cope with it.

“We have instructions to bind your hands together,” said the female elf when Nesterin had handed Hazel over to Elandrin and hopped off Falon. 

Nesterin ran her remaining hand through the soft fur of her friend and pushed her head against his muzzle before handing his reigns to Alloran. Falon could handle himself, he was brave and wise and wonderful, but she'd still rather these two looked after him than these new elves. 

Another female elf, one who was very little, with messily cropped brown hair and a long nose stepped forward in order to bind her. 

“You might find it difficult,” said Nesterin, waving her left arm at the little elf.

The little elf looked panicked, looking from her rope to Nesterin’s amputation and then back to her apparent superior, “What do I do?” she whined.

The other one thought for a minute, frowning. Before deciding upon, “Tie her hand to her neck.”

Nesterin pulled a face. That sounded both humiliating and uncomfortable. “That’s really not necessary. You can take my staff and I promise I won’t struggle.”

She offered her staff to the little elf who seemed content enough to take it, but the other ordered sternly:

“Tie her hand to her neck, Ebin.”

Ebin nodded again and prepared her ropes, fixing it around Nesterin’s one remaining wrist, and then pulling the rope upwards so that her hand was resting underneath her jaw.

“Sorry,” said Ebin.

“Don’t apologise to her Ebin! We’re arresting her!”

As they led her into Arlathvhen, Nesterin tried to focus on the positives. They’d sent ten archers out to capture her, so they clearly thought she was a force to be reckoned with. Lassoing her like an august ram and marching her into camp was some Keeper’s way of feeling powerful in the face of some unknown force. Once she started being as charming and respectful and polite as she’d ever been in the Inquisition, they would no longer feel threatened. And then the real work could begin.

* * *

 Some of the people on the outskirts of the encampment, near the yellow and red and orange and green tents, had started to notice her approach. They stopped eating and talking and examining weapons and crafting tools to stand up and get a good look at her.

It was difficult to keep her chin up when it was tied to her hand by a length of rope, but Nesterin kept it high. She flashed a smile and a shrug at a woman by a pot and mercifully nobody booed at her or threw cabbages or spat in her hair. In truth, nobody seemed to know _what_ to make of her. They frowned and looked at her, stony silent unless they were whispering among themselves.

It was better that way, she insisted to herself. It _was_ . And she didn’t feel any shame in her stomach or heat on her face. _She honestly didn’t._

Nesterin was led through the incredibly large encampment to the centre. It took almost half an hour to cross to the middle, through stalls, clans, cooking food and stony-faced Dalish. At the centre was a large white tent, closed off but for a central opening.

Deshanna was there, and so were her sisters, waiting for her. When Deshanna saw her approach, she ran up to Nesterin.

“Nesterin, I promise you I didn’t know anything about this,” she said desperately “This is chaos. Everyone has a different idea what to do with you. No one can decide anything. I think they’ve been talking in circles about you for days.”

As she got closer she could hear the sound of voices coming from the tent. Presumably, those voices belonged to the council of keepers.

“We can’t,” Nesterin heard one voice say. “She has powerful friends in powerful places. It will be a hostile message to the chantry.”

“Good. I only feel hostile to the chantry.”

“I agree, she should be made an example of. We should punish her publically.”

“Punish her how?”

“Death of course.”

“Death? Mythal preserve, that is too strong.”

“Banishment?”

“No no no, that’s too weak.”

At the word _death_ , Nesterin turned to Deshanna who looked ill. She chewed on her lips, and realised that this wasn’t quite the slap on the wrist that she’d been expecting from the keepers. As her stomach lurched, she felt a pull on the ropes that were binding her as she was led inside the tent.

 


	10. The Way of the Bow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please be aware there's some explicit sexual content in this chapter. Memory tongue is the new fade tongue.

The tent had been constructed to shelter halla from the light rainfall that still hovered over Serault. Already the loose white linen was smeared with dirt and grime as the halla jostled for space under their coverings, letting out a series of near-constant low bleating. Their wet fur, excrement and hot breath made the atmosphere heavy and putrid whilst the dirt underfoot was wet and thick with mud.

“Did they really have to tie you to a post?” asked Deshanna furiously looking over at Nesterin.

The woman who had dined with Emperors, who knew the Divine personally and had been venerated by the chantry was indeed tied to the post at the centre of the tent. There was a rope around her neck, another at her feet and a third pulling her wrist above her head. She felt a little like a broken marionette that somebody was crudely trying to keep upright.  

“To be honest, I think they might have panicked,” said Nesterin.

The hastily formed Council of Keepers had argued for an hour about when she ought to be tried before they decided on the first light of tomorrow. Then they had argued for an hour and a half about the logistics and location of the trial before arguing for another three-quarters of an hour about where to keep their prisoner for the night.

The rain had not let up once, and by then each of the assembled nearly one hundred or so Keepers in attendance were either tired, hungry, bored or all three at once. They’d wanted to put her in a cage, but- obviously- no such cage could be found amongst the large gathering of Dalish. They were humane enough to acknowledge that a night out in the rain would be less than pleasant, but they were wary of her trying to escape.

It was proposed that one of the many Keepers could offer up their aravel and a guard could be positioned outside but most were unwilling to give up their own dwellings for the night and those who did were criticised for being a sympathizer who would no doubt try and aid the harellan in her escape attempt. And so, it was decided, when everyone’s patience was near the end of their tether and the smell of spiced meats for dinner crept into the Keepers’ tent that the traitor would have to sleep with the halla. There was a guard posted outside, they’d taken away her staff and her spirit blade and all but Deshanna- who was permitted as counsel- were banned from seeing her.

Nesterin pulled her head up, hoping to find a scrap of fresh air that didn’t smell like shit and damp halla- to no avail. Her stomach lurched slightly and Nesterin was suddenly overcome.

A burst of laughter erupted from her throat.

It took over her whole body until Nesterin was shaking from it. She hadn’t laughed like this in a long time. Deshanna’s frown only made it worse and her hand was tied up so she couldn’t even hold it over her face to muffle her laughter as she was accustomed to doing. So she laughed loudly and deeply until her ribs starting aching and her throat became sore.

“Well I’m glad you find this all so amusing,” said Deshanna. Nesertin snorted again, and the waves of laughter came over her once more.

“I had my own castle. People tripped over themselves to catch a glimpse of me riding by. Even...even when I was leaving, some kid said he wanted to do everything he could to protect me. And now I’m tied to a post in a halla tent. It’s funny, Deshanna.”

Nesterin sighed heavily, doing her best to compose herself, calling up images of Cassandra’s stiff back and stiffer upper lip.  “Do you think you could convince someone to get me a dram of whiskey? Or a little beer, I don’t mind. Last request of the condemned man and all that.”

Deshanna ignored her, saying: “Surely your friends in the Inquisition can help you, yes? I can send ravens…to that Nightingale woman. The Inquisition came and they fortified the city just when it looked the Mad Duke and the cities in the Free Marches would destroy us all. They can do it again for you, surely?”

It was the first time Nesterin had heard Deshanna speak about Wycome. Not since her letters had come through, pleading and desperate in a way that Nesterin had never known her to be in life. There came again the waves and waves of guilt for all she’d put her keeper through, was _still_ putting her through.

“It won’t be necessary. Please don’t worry, Deshanna. Is Falon alright? I gave him to someone from Uthevhen, I hoped he'd find you. ”

“The hart? Bel has him. He'll be fed and cleaned and well looked after. I take it you have a plan to get out of here?”

“Even if the Inquisition still existed, which it does not, it would take weeks to get here. Leliana might still have agents in the area...she has agents everywhere, but I think it would be foolish for us to anger so many Dalish. No, I’m just going to respect the wishes of the Council and stand trial,” she pressed her lips together and added, slightly wryly. “I asked you if I could speak at the Harrenhal. I suppose I’ve got my wish.”

She thought back to what Deshanna had said to her on the night she discovered Bel’s magic. _This is what I get for my prayers when only the Dread Wolf is left to answer them._

“You’ll be pleading for your life,” said Deshanna hotly.

“They won’t actually kill me, I’m certain of it. No one’s ever been executed at an Arlathvhen before.”

“There’s never been a trial before. I don’t know what’s so important that you would risk death to speak about.”

Deshanna stared intently at her. _Tell her. Just tell her already,_ said a voice inside of Nesterin’s head and Nesterin couldn’t dispute it. A halla barged past her roughly and Nesterin twisted, certain that she would be covered in bruises by the morning. Her head felt unusually swampy and she knew she’d never get through the night without something to drink. She looked up at the ceiling of the tent because she couldn’t quite bring herself to look at Deshanna before she began:

“Um...yes, well, about that. I’m sorry Deshanna. I was resolved to tell you first, of course, as a warning, I suppose. But this wasn’t entirely how I’d envisaged it.”

“Envisaged what?”

Nesterin should have told Deshanna on the first night. She’d been a hypocrite, raging at Deshanna for not telling the truth whilst twisting and omitting her own truths. And then there were all the nights after that, and the days and the days of travelling. She should have said something.

“There has to be some wine somewhere at least, it’s Arlathvhen for the sake of Elgar’nan!” Nesterin muttered. She twisted uncomfortably, impatient for some alcohol to clear her head and clear away some of the guilt she was feeling.

“ _Nesterin_.”

“My coat!” said Nesterin triumphantly as she remembered a skin flask about the same size and shape of a human heart that was squirrelled away about her person. She’d filled it up with a strong, clear grain alcohol at Wycome, stealing sips on the long journey to Serault whenever she needed them. “I think there’s still some in my coat. Not much though, can you get it for me?”

Deshanna didn’t move, gaping at Nesterin. Nesterin cursed and nodded towards her hand tied above her.

“I can’t get it myself Deshanna, please... It’s difficult alright. Difficult to say and difficult to think of. Just...it will help. Please.”

Her Keeper looked over at her, utterly horrified, and Nesterin pretended not to notice. She kept her face reasonable, trying to make it completely clear that without a drink she wouldn’t be able to continue. Reluctantly, Deshanna obliged and went rummaging through Nesterin’s pockets, until she found the skin flask.

“This smells like poison,” said Deshanna, unscrewing the lid and sniffing the mouth of the flask. But she pressed it to Nesterin’s lips.

Nesterin took a burning gulp of liquor and felt a knot of tension somewhere in her shoulders loosen slightly.

“I have a theory,” Nesterin was able to say, as the alcohol began to take effect. She gestured with her head to indicate that Deshanna should pour a little more into her mouth. “I have a theory why there are suddenly more mages in our clan. And I’m almost positive it’s correct. And it’s the same reason why my face is bare now.”

“Oh?” asked Deshanna, frowning.

Quickly, Nesterin calculated how best to begin. Fortunately, grain alcohol at a 95% proof was good at clearing the head and loosening the tongue. “Two years ago there were great big holes opening up in the sky, yes? You can accept that, right? I wrote to you everything about them, what they looked like, what they were, why they were and I told you that only I could close them, right? And I told you that an ancient Darkspawn was threatening to travel to the Black City and become a god. So you know that’s all true and possible?”

Deshanna looked as if she were struggling to follow, and what’s more she did not look like she believed it all. “I- well, I mean…” was all she said feebly.

“This is only the preamble,  Deshanna. If this is the limit of your suspension of disbelief then I am dead in the water as far as this conversation goes.”

“Yes. Okay. You wrote to us. You told us. You were adamant that it was the truth.”   

“Holes in the sky are possible. The veil can be ripped. Ancient beings can find themselves in our world despite appearing dead for centuries,” Nesterin shut her eyes and braced herself. “I’ve met Mythal and I’ve met Fen Harel. I saw them as clearly as I see you in front of me.”

Nesterin related her story to Deshanna. The whole of it, from Haven and gaining the mark to the Eluvians and losing her hand. She didn’t have the courage to look at her Keeper when she spoke of the Temple of Mythal. She couldn’t even bear to think about what Deshanna’s face might look like when she told her about the removal of her vallaslin, about what the vallaslin actually meant. And when she tried to say, _I made a promise to him. I love him and he loves me,_ her voice faltered and a tear hit her cheek.

There was silence. Nesterin willed Deshanna to say something, anything. Deshanna swallowed, she looked at her feet. She rearranged her cowl. And all the the while, Nesterin was holding her breath.

“You can’t speak tomorrow. You can’t say this,” said Deshanna quietly.

“I have to. We all deserve the truth if nothing else.”

“You’ll be slaughtered. Gutted.”

“I have to believe that we’re better than that,” she paused and added, “You _do_ believe me, don’t you?”

Deshaanna bit her lip and her face scrunched up, she looked away and breathed out. “Yes. _Dirthamen ma ghilana, Dirthamen ma halani.”_

And then she left.

* * *

 Alone in the tent, under the light of one dim lantern, with only the halla for company, Nesterin tried not to think about being put to death by the Dalish. The rain on the roof had become as loud as rhythmic drumming, the halla bleated, snored and farted constantly and Deshanna’s voice sounded over and over again, _You’ll be slaughtered. Gutted. You can’t say this._

But Nesterin wouldn’t let herself think about that. The Dalish deserved to know. No more lies, no more obfuscation, mistranslation and misdirection. 

Nesterin’s arm began to grow sore. The binds on her wrist left burns and she began to feel a hot stinging as the thin skin underneath the rope began to graze and break. The blood rushed from her fingers and into her arm, making it feel heavy and swollen. Soon her hand began to turn white, began to grow numb. She tried not to think about what a night of damage would do to her one remaining arm. She tried to will herself to get some rest, but once again- of course- she found no way to slip into sleep.

A story entered her head, then. One she’d heard for the first time as a teenager from Deshanna. About Fen’Harel and the tree.

She’d heard most of the parts of the story before then of course: Andruil had tied Fen’harel to the tree for hunting the halla without her blessing. Fen’Harel had tricked her and used his cunning to escape, pitting one of the Evanuris against one of the Forgotten Ones before chewing through the ropes. Nesterin didn’t know whether she could get the Keepers to do the same at the council, make them fight against one another until they completely forgot to punish her- but in truth that wasn’t why she thought of the story.

She thought of the story because the grain alcohol had done its job and because when Deshanna told the story to her as a teenager it was the first time she’d been told that Andruil, Goddess of the Hunt had trapped the Dread Wolf to have him serve her in bed for a year and a day. Before then she’d only heard the watered-down version, where Andruil had done it simply to humiliate Fen’Harel, or she’d done it to have him be her servant for a year and a day.

But, no, Andruil had wanted the Dread Wolf bound and brought to her bed. Submissive. Desperate. There only to please her.

The Dalish had a strange relationship with Fen’Harel when you really stopped to think about it. And they were sort of obsessed with ideas of the wolf’s sexual prowess. His was the name most often invoked in the throes of passions or used in obscenities.

After all, it was the Dread Wolf who took you.

Nesterin thought of Fen’Harel bound to a tree and she wondered if there was any truth to it. His hands pinioned against the bark, a rope against his quivering throat as Andruil leaned into him and whispered in his ear, “Now, now, my captive wolf. Don’t struggle so. I promise you, you will enjoy serving me.”

And then she thought of wandering through the Western Approach, travelling towards another set of rifts, in a party with Dorian, Solas and The Iron Bull. It was simply accepted by then that Solas would share her tent when they travelled together, there were no longer any furtive glances or raised eyebrows about it. But that was mainly because their relationship was no longer the focus of all of the gossip and speculation.

“I wonder...would Dorian appreciate your snooping?” Solas asked her, not looking up from his book.

It was dark in the shade of the canyon, away from the bright white of the moon, and the nights in the Western Approach could grow bitterly cold, she could feel it vividly, even in her memory. Nesterin found it somewhat frustrating to be baking underneath her clothes during the day and shivering in them come nightfall so she often rolled herself up in her blankets until not even her head was visible. Tonight however, she was sat near the entrance of the tent, occasionally darting her head upwards, trying to catch a look in the narrow gaps between the fabric of the tent.

“I’m not snooping. I’m reading.” She held up the book on her lap, propped open entirely for show.

“The same page for the past forty minutes.”

“It’s a very complex passage. And it does seem like _you’re_ the one snooping on _me."_

Lazily, and still not drawing his eyes away from the page, Solas reached out to twine a finger through the bottom of Nesterin’s curls. In private moments, when it was loose and wild, he liked to touch her hair. She often threatened to shave it off when it felt heavy or became tangled or she was too hot but she also enjoyed the way he rolled a particularly thick or tightly coiled strand of hair between his fingers.

“Stop listening, Vhenan,” he said softly. “Dorian and The Iron Bull’s business is their own.”

“But you heard what he said...about the unlocked door and the silky underwear....I wonder...”

There was a frustrated huff from Solas as he shut his book and sank further down into the bedrolls. Nesterin glanced over and his eyes were closed in a perfect performance of a deep sleep.

“Stealing away to the fade,” she growled and crawled over to him on her hands and knees. “Will not spare you from this conversation.” Solas made no response. So she shifted onto him, one thigh either side of his waist, straddling him.

“I heard Dorian talking about being bound and leashed, you know,” Nesterin whispered.

She swore she saw the bridge of his temple crease, just slightly, before smoothing out again. She tested out a theory that she was in the process of developing by sitting back slightly so that her backside was pressed into Solas’ lap. Proving her hypothesis, Solas moved again, just slightly beneath her, his hands moving up towards her thighs.

Nesterin allowed him a few listless caresses of her legs through her britches, her breath deepening slightly as her skin grew hotter and her pulse grew quicker, before she grabbed him by both wrists and pinned them over his head.

Reaching over him to keep his hands in place brought her closer to Solas’ face. Their foreheads, noses and lips were achingly close to touching. She looked up slightly and his eyes met hers; a cool shade of grey that always made her feel warm all over. He smiled at her, the half-amused, half- bemused smile that she had claimed as her own and she kissed him.

“Did I wake you,” she asked, whispering against the corner of his mouth. As she flicked kisses along his neck, tasting salt and cool skin and soap, Solas shifted his sly hands out of her grip, moving them towards her body. Nesterin caught him quickly, grabbing his wrists again and pinning them above his head once more.

“Indomitable focus, remember?” she teased. “You’ll have to try harder...”

“I suspect I’m going to come to regret saying that.”

“Possibly. Anyway, I think seeing _you_ dominated would be a much more fascinating sight.”

Solas laughed quietly, the steeliness of his grey eyes had softened slightly with desire and they looked momentarily sad.  “You’ve already seen it. Everyday, Vhenan.”

“What do you mean?”

Mouth twitching, Solas lost all traces of sadness as a kind of hungry resolve seemed to take hold of him. From the slight slant of his eye and set of his jaw, Nesterin was quite sure that he was up to something. He sat up, folding his arms around Nesterin so that they could kiss face to face for a moment. A wonderful, languid, teasing sort of kiss. Then, when the kiss was broken, Solas removed his shirts.

The scorching sun of the Western Approach had slightly browned his head and hands, bringing out fresh freckles on his face, but his torso was still quite pale. His edges were hard and smooth but she loved the feel of them, and the delicate jut of his collar bones was like fine fretwork, tempting to touch and to kiss. Solas had already completed the laborious task of removing his leg wrappings, but he dove into his pack and brought them out, holding them in front of her. Along with that, there was a small viol timer, filled with red sand.

She was about to drily comment that she would prefer him less dressed over more when he spoke again.

“A wager? I know you’re fond of them.”

She was rather. Mainly with Varric, to pass the time at camp. Silly things like inventing throwing games or predicting the moves and habits of their companions. Sometimes the Iron Bull got in on them too, but he was always too good at it to make it any kind of sport at all, and he always inevitably suggested they start tallying up their kills, which Nesterin never really liked to think about. The look in Solas’ eye suggested however that this was a different kind of wager. One that she would thoroughly enjoy.

“Before the timer runs out I have two tasks to complete. The first is escaping these bonds.”

“The second?”

“You.”

“Oh. Well... _Fuck._ ”

And that was how she ended up naked, straddled over Solas, his hands bound with leather, his face buried inside of her sex. She was wet and trembling, fighting not to let out anything louder than a few mewls of pleasure while his tongue danced across the folds of her skin.

As her resolve gave in and waves of pleasure rippled over her, she barked and shook violently. Nesterin arched her body backwards and when she did so, his hands caught her, smoothing over her backside, deepening the burning electricity that coursed through her skin. She’d lost the wager. She was not disappointed, panting and coughing and completely satisfied.

 _It wasn’t a very good knot to begin with. He kept kissing you to distract you and then he positioned his wrists in such a way that the leather would always be loose_ , said a voice.

Nesterin looked up, still panting, still naked, and was confronted with a shade in the vague form of a person, with an even vaguer form of a face. She let out a yell of horror and found herself shunted, violently, back into the halla tent.

 _I’m sorry,_ said the voice of one of Mythal’s servants. The loudest one who had helped her conquer the rage demon. _But if I have to sit inside your memories, I’m going to notice things. It was either the wrappings or your nether regions._

 _How? How can you possibly have gotten inside my memory?_ Nesterin demanded. _You're just a...remnant...you’re old dead knowledge_.

 _Well, that’s very rude,_ snapped the voice. _An old dead remnant who helped you save a little boy. You’re welcome._

_This shouldn’t be possible._

_Drank from many arcane wells have you? Who are you to say what is and isn’t possible?_

_You’re not like the others. I can hear you so much more clearly. And now apparently I can see you too, sort of._

_Oh, the others,_ said the voice dismissively. _They have no imagination. They blindly serve. Just like in life, I suppose. I don’t think I was ever like them. I’m not sure how, but I’m sure of it. My name is Amaril. I was alive once. Yes, Amaril. I am starting to remember that_

_That’s why you’re helping me?_

_Yes. And you sorely need help._

_Why?_

_Because you’re quite stupid for a start. And because I have seen you, Nesterin._

Sometimes, with the voices, Nesterin had started to feel quite insane. It took more effort than most people realised to try and tune them out, but fortunately, they never felt intrusive. Just droning whispers of a forgotten past bound to the service of a diminished god. When this voice said her name, though, Nesterin shivered. This had to be what going truly mad felt like.

 _When the well was destroyed you became our vessel,_ the voice of Amaril continued. _And a human heart is so different from stone walls. We have absorbed as much of you as you have us. I know you. More than your family, more than your friends or even your lover. So I have resolved to help you. I had no resolve before you were my vessel. Now I use it for you.”_

 _Or even your lover_...Nesterin thought. She had started to wonder if the voices from the well were deliberately wrong-footing her or omitting the whole truth because it was Mythal’s will. It was entirely possible that whatever remained of Mythal now had the same goal of Solas, to restore the elves of old, and all she’d been left with to help her was a glorified elven dictionary.

But then what was to say that Amaril wasn’t part of it too?

 _Do you know what Solas intends to do?_ asked Nesterin.

_A theory, perhaps. But we have to discuss it later. Someone is coming for you._

* * *

 

Before she could demand more answers, Amaril’s predictions came true. Suddenly, Nesterin became aware of her surroundings once more, of the halla and of the stench and of the sound of heavy rain upon the roof of the tent.

And suddenly, there was an elf woman in front of her, stepping out of nothing and into reality, rolling a ring that was obviously enchanted with invisibility between her fingers. She was old and her skin was tanned like halla. She wore a heavy shag of animal skins, like an avvar, with a dagger at her hip and a scar on her jaw. She was gaunt as a skeleton and very threadbare looking, as if she’d not eaten in years whilst under the dim glow of the one lantern in the tent, her vallaslin was horrifying.

It was for Dirthamen, like Deshanna’s, but it was an incredibly crude approximation of Dirthamen’s mark. It was hard and jagged where it should have been finely curved, made more from blood and scabs and broken flesh than ink. Somebody either incredibly mad or incredibly drunk had made it, thought Nesterin.

“I come to rescue you,” said the woman anxiously. Her voice was strange and slow, with a slightly strangled tone to it- like a voice gone wrong from ill use “My name’s Gaelbana, ain’t got much time to be doin’ it.”

Nesterin shrank back as Gaelbana used her knife to start sawing away at her bonds and said, “Actually, I’m fine. I don’t need to be rescued. I want to stay.”

Gaelabana looked back at her, “Re-really?”

“I’m afraid so….but, I thank you for your concern,” said Nesterin, because she didn’t really know what else to say.

Taking a beat, Gaelbana went back to sawing on the ropes. Nesterin opened her mouth to protest once more, but as she did so, the tip of Gaelbana’s knife was pressed into her neck. At the same time, Nesterin felt a rope being inserted into her mouth before the ring of invisibility was shoved onto her own finger.

“Then I ‘spose that means I’m here to kidnap you.”


	11. Gaelbana's Story

I knew that when the skies started spittin out demons, the wrath of heaven was comin’ right for me. Never known much, but I knew that right enough. The Dread Wolf shoots a slow arrow but he shoots it straight and true. And it always finds you in the end.

Nowadays, they call me crazy. Crazy old woman in the forest, they say, eating her meat raw with her hands, stinking of shit, living all on her own. I thought the darkness would hide me, I thought the shit would muddle my scent, I thought I’d be safer on my own. That, and I couldn’t bear facing my clan anymore.

If you've lived your life around the Free Marches you won’t never understand what it’s like for those of us on the border between Tevinter and Nevarra. The ruins remind us of how far our people have fallen, and there’s this old dead magic lingerin’ through everything. Gets right inside your head, it does. Right inside your head til you can’t think straight. And there are the slavers. Slavers waiting to grab your children right from your arms. They take them young and unmarked. More money without vallaslin, I suppose.

I had a baby once. She’d be older than you now. Pretty like you though, I bet. Pretty brown eyes and a pretty plump mouth like she did when she was small. Only, I don’t like thinkin about her bein pretty. It’d be worse in Tevinter for a pretty one. Don’t ask how I know that, I just know. Deep in the bones of me, I know.

T’were because of Tevinter I let him along with us to begin with.  No vallaslin, strange way of talking, strange ways in general- we thought him a runaway slave. Better to leave him to it, they tried to tell me. Leave him to runnin or not runnin, survivin or not survivin, ‘tever he saw fit to do. But I was their Keeper, they listened to me back then. Respected me. And I had a baby once.  My pretty thing. I wanted to talk to someone who knew what it was like. I’ll never see her again, not as long as I live- but if I knew what Tevinter looked like I could imagine her someplace. I could dream of her whole.

Solas? Yes, he called himself Solas with us too.

Had a camp in the ruins of the Silent Plains _._ Neat little nest all tucked away in the rock.  He said there’d been a battle there, and that there were music in the beyond on account of it. Said he could show us how to listen. Some of us took ‘gainst him right away for that. Seemed like a dark kind of magic like they have in that Imperium. But he was happy to come along with us. He said he was fascinated by the Dalish. Thought it was brave us never wantin’ to be slaves, us trying to do whatever we could  to keep the old ways around. He wanted to learn about us.

Oh. Oh. No. He did. He wanted to learn. That’s what he said. Swear it down. And we learned him all right. We learned him and we cursed ourselves.

Cursed me, cursed my clan, cursed all the Dalish an’ all the humans and all the world. Cursed to wreck! Cursed to ruin! Waitin’ on that terrible reckoning!

No, I don’t need no rest. What’s rest? What’s sleep? T’aint had none of it these five long years. Tis a story that got to be told to someone. Sorry it’s me doin’ the tellin’. My mind’s worn down to nothin’ but the bloody stumps. Sorry it’s you doin the listenin’. Such a pretty thing. Like a little brown bird. Can I touch your hair? There now, soft, so soft to the touch. He got to you too, I see your face. I see all your broken pieces.

So, Solas he said. And Solas we called him. He was my friend.

Said he knew Tevinter. Neromenian, Quarinas, Minrathous and the black towers, the old crumblin rock and the people and the paved streets. _Let me build it for you in a dream, Lethallin,_ he says to me. _I’m not yet strong enough to make it like the life, but you might find some comfort in it._ Like walking through a fog of a memory. Shapes and blurs and the seams showin in the fade where he tried to twist it for me. But I saw it and I saw shades of my baby. Grown tall. Her back straight. Never bent. Never broken. I knew it was her and...I’d never never gotten a gift like it. He said he had to go. Vast corners to travel, all manner of things to understand, friends he needed to find. I begged him to stay. Just a little while. Stay, stay a little longer, my friend.

Hahaha. Funny, isn’t it? Stay, stay! said the Keeper to the Dread Wolf... when we’re the ones is meant to drive him out.

But my clan, my clan thinks they can sniff out his strange. What right this man got to be sittin’ at the left side of the keeper? Talkin’ in her ear, quiet like. Showin’ her magic she aint never used before. Takin’ her to shades of cities in dreams. He ain’t marked, he aint kin, just a strange mage from strange lands, come to us from out of a rock and whisperin’ his words like sweet poison.

We was wrong, see, he said. We said the words wrong. We sang the songs wrong. Told the tales wrong. He weren’t the oldest of us. Not a Hahren. But he made us feel like children. Children with a teacher who was good and kind and patient. I listened. I learned. I know the words….Heruamin lotirien alai uethri maeria. Halurocon yalei nam bahna dolin nereba maome. Aha, I see you know it too. Knew you would. Such a pretty song. Pretty and sad. Pretty, pretty, sad, sad girl.

Not Dalish, my clan said. Bastardization. Abomination. They knew how the things were done. They knew the way of the arrow, the bow, and the forest. Hadn’t I always told them? And here he comes, says: don’t honour the gods. Honour yourselves, for being brave and strong and fighting for freedom. The Keeper puts away the statues, tells no more stories and makes no offerings at the hearth. The Keeper breaks the wolf statues to pieces and lets Fen’Harel sneak in by night.

And then he told me the darkest true.

Same as you, written clear on your face. Gave me a choice and I thought to choose to be free. Same as you, written clear on your face. And that was the final thread to break.

The Keeper is mad, says my First. Mad says my second. Mad says my bondmate. Mad says my clan. My face is clear, my mind is clear, but they shout and shout and shout. Abomination. Bastardization. Creature of Fen’Harel. He poisoned my mind in the night, they said. With magic and tinctures and little stewed teas. I thought they meant to break me, kill me, anything to free me from the grip of the strange mage. But being a Keeper was all I knew...I had no baby, I only had my clan. I couldn’t lose them. I was frightened to die.

Stupid. Weak. Scared old woman. I wrote it out, I held the blade. I killed the world.

Yes! Yes! I cried. Yes! You are right. I feel him in my dreams. In my head. A creature of Fen’Harel, shaped strange and kind and gentle to throw us off his scent. We must drive him away. We must  kill him if we can. Kill and beat and bleed and maim. That will break the spell. That will bring the order back. Send him away, but keep the Keeper. Kill him, but don’t kill me!

Weak. Stupid. Disgusting. Foul. He was my friend.

You know the teeth of Fen’Harel? Yes, you know. You look sick with the knowing, sad, pretty bird.

We take the clothes.We sell them later for a few copper pieces. We take the clothes, we bind the hands. No nails for the legs, so we broke all the glass we had. Pushed and stitched. And brought forth the blood. Oh, I smell his blood. I smell it when I sleep, I smell it when I wake. It’s right in my head and I can’t think straight. I’m swimmin’ in it.

And then we tell him to _run_.

You look sick, pretty bird. If you mean to kill me, you only have to wait a few moments more. Maybe I’d find a minute’s peace. Just one. It’s all I want.

We start the count. One hundred and we ride. With sticks and knives and rocks and ropes. We hunt for hours but can’t find no trace. No mark, no print, no blood, no smell. It shows, my clan says. It shows he weren’t natural. Slipping away like shadows and slime.

At night, I go out to find him. If there’s a body, I mean to plant him, I mean to give him his tree. But I don’t find him neither. Not until I dream. I dream that night of the shade of a memory of Tevinter. And that’s where he comes to me. My friend. And he says:

They were right. I am Fen’Harel. Now it’s time for _you_ to run.

I left my clan that night. Left them and went through the forest, I took the opposite path to the one the Dread Wolf chose. Five long years, and I don’t know how I’m still alive. Thought I died so many times, thought there’d be an end to the running. But there’s no end, and the Dread Wolf is laughing.

It took time, but I knew that when the skies started spitting out demons, the wrath of heaven was comin’ right for me. It was him wasn’t it?

In a manner of speaking, you say. Aye, I know the manner. I know who’s speaking. No one else knew in the whole world, but I knew. I’m sick and I’m cursed with the knowing. I carved myself for Dirthamen in the woods with a hot knife and a broken looking glass . I knew what it meant, but I knew I didn’t deserve no freedom. Slave to a secret, that’s what I am. A slave.

So why did I take you? How did I find you? I can see you wondering it.

There are still Dalish in my woods. People I don’t know. People I don’t deserve to know. But I miss their voices. And I miss seeing fire. I heard them talking and I knew you’d be comin’. The Dalish girl who patched up the sky. You had to know him. The Dalish girl who lost her vallaslin. You _knew_ him. And you knew my secrets.

The girl is mad! They’ll say to you, I think to myself. It’ll be the teeth for you. And maybe you can run fast. But only the Dread Wolf runs fast enough. I went because I wanted to see you before you died. The only other person who knew my secret. Thought maybe for a minute I wouldn’t feel so alone.

I didn’t have no designs to save you, though. Look at me. Mad and old, scared and stinking of shit. I don’t save, I think to myself. All do is damn.

But then I went by your tent and I heard you talking to your Keeper. Telling your tale like I’m telling mine. Start to finish, front to back. And that’s how I knew that I had to try. Try harder than I ever have done in this whole miserable life of mine. Try my best to save you.

You think I mean to ask you to defeat him?

You think if you win you can keep the Dread Wolf from biting at my ankles? Hahahahaha, that’s a laugh. Hahahaha.

Aint no way to stop him. Aint no way to beat him. I killed the world and the slow arrow is already in the air.

No, I aint sayin’ all this to save myself, girl. I’m damned forever. And I aint so sure this world deserves to be saved. Full as it is of all the hurt and the hate and the fear.

I saved you because you said you loved him, pretty bird.

You said you loved him and you said he loved you. And Solas was my friend. And I’m sorry I hurt him.


	12. Guide Me to Death

It took Nesterin roughly thirty minutes to escape Gaelbana.

She’d still been wearing Gaelbana’s obscuring ring and was being dragged by a rope tied around her middle through the forest, following Gaelbana’s fevered shuffle. The old woman dropped the rope when her trembling fingers failed her, and she was incredibly slow to pick it up- her bones creaking and shifting as she hunched, the pain written all over her face. During this time, Nesterin wriggled the ties around her waist over her hips like a fish might slip from a net and simply stepped out of the bindings.

To her surprise, Gaelbana picked up the rope like nothing had happened, dragging it along the dirt as if she still actually expected a person to be on the end of the slack line. She went on muttering to herself, broken words of common and elven, said in a broken voice.

Nesterin could see that Gaelbana was very ill. She coughed deeply, her eyes were strangely glazed and her mal-nourished face was pained and pinched. Nesterin had watched Gaelbana pick up a mushroom growing around a tree root, a cluster of Falon’ din’s Caps which were- unsurprisingly, given the name- not at all edible, place it in her mouth before spitting it out.

How, she wondered, how in the name of all that was holy could a Dalish have got as far as Gaelbana and as old as Gaelbana and still be putting any old mushroom picked off the forest floor into her mouth?

So she stayed. She pulled the gag out of her mouth and picked up the other end of the rope, twining it between her wrist so she could follow along behind Gaelbana in the manner that one might walk a particularly dense Mabari.

 _You never see the wood, do you? You only ever see the trees,_ muttered Amaril angrily, just as Nesterin resolved to stay. _You should go back to the Dalish if you mean to ask them for help against Solas. Before it’s too late._

_It might already be too late. If some of the Dalish wanted to kill me before…I don’t think escaping will endear me to them at all._

_And you pity the old woman_ , sighed Amaril. The hair at the back of Gaelbana’s head was thinning, there were scabs and cuts on her scalp where she would scratch it nervously.

As Amaril spoke, Gaelbana scratched it again, hard and frantically and Nesterin couldn’t help herself. She took off the obscuring ring and reached forwards, to stop Gaelbana’s scratching with a light touch of her fingers. Doing so revealed that she had managed to escape, but Gaelbana didn’t seem too bothered about that. She raked her milky eyes over Nesterin and pointed towards a path into the deep woods to indicate the way they were going.

 _Very well. I suppose you intend to gently nudge her towards civilisation,”_ said Amaril curtly, “ _There, you’ll send a message to Leliana and regroup. You’ll call in a favour with Keeper Hawen’s clan or contact Loranil to repair broken Dalish relations. Then you’ll visit the University of Orlais in the hope of finding someone who knows roughly one sixteenth of what Solas knows about the fade **, at best**. All while the old woman receives medical attention and all while Solas dances circles around you because you are, honestly, as easy to predict as the rising of the sun._

 _What’s that supposed to mean_?

_You never see the wood. You only ever see the trees. The Dalish are a distraction and your eye is being kept upon them so that you won’t be able to look elsewhere._

Gaelbana didn’t appear to be intentionally a part of any distraction, but she certainly made for an effective one. After four hours of walking, it became clear that she didn’t actually have any plans for Nesterin once she had been delivered from the Arlathvhen. The deep woods around Serault were a wild knot of twisted, roots, darkness and strange creatures. Kidnapper or no, Nesterin would never be able to forgive herself if she left the old woman at the mercy of giant spiders, wolves and bears.

For once she was happy to have the voices in her head. Gaelbana muttered faintly to herself while the voice of Amaril only grew stronger and stronger.

_We should to stop trailing so clumsily behind him. We should make our own move. Let him worry about **us** for a change._

_And what exactly should I do? I have no army. I have no clout._

_You’re the Herald of Andraste. How much more clout do you need? Fit him up for something. Put a warrant out for his arrest. Let him dodge Orlais and Fereldan armies and slow him a little._

Nesterin had the remainder of the alcohol in her skin flask to sip from, and she was usually uninterested in food after drinking satisfied her, however she was determined to put some food into the old woman’s belly.

“What? Huh…oh…food. Yes. Meat. Yes. Meat and camp.”

She had a mind to catch a rabbit; there were a few running skittishly around the lichen, disturbing the dead leaves.

 Before the Inquistion, Nesterin had been a poor hunter- at best. Thom had been utterly scandalised, “I thought yer supposed to be Dalish!”, and wouldn’t take her intensive education in lore as excuse. He’d patiently shown her how to set snares and the art of tracking. She’d been quite proud when he’d made rabbit stew that night, announcing that she’d caught it.

“So watch for the scorch marks,” joked Varric.

Nesterin set the snares, just like Thom had taught her, confident that one of them would bear fruit. She gathered kindling to set a fire, hoping to find some birch she could use to cook food in. Gaelbana settled down happily enough in the dirt where Nesterin placed the piles of sticks, muttering to herself again and, as she worked, Amaril continued to talk to her.

_I've been thinking about the veil...it should have gone by now. If the elves are changing why isn't everything else?_

_I don't know. I don't know anything._

_Maybe Solas isn't as powerful as he wants you to think. Not yet at least._

_Oh?_

_I’ve been thinking about the foci,_ she said. _It’s strange to be thinking about anything. To make new thoughts. But I watched as you watched Corypheous use that orb. I watched as Solas told you how he intended to use it, how it was his orb. It is only one of several foci. My masters used it to harness their magical power. Each of the masters had their own. A foci for each of the pantheon_.”

 _Yes, Solas told me that too. And now the gods are locked away behind the veil_.

There was a rabbit caught live in one of the snares. Nesterin found it near a purple clump of dog violet. Black blood was mattered up in its brown furs as it struggled and it jumped and it twitched with pure, agonised, desperation. Nesterin lifted it in her hand and she could feel it’s little heart beating.

 _And their orbs may well be with them. Such powerful objects, it wouldn’t have been prudent for Fen’Harel to simply leave them lying about. Anyone could have found them….but Mythal was not locked behind the veil. She was already dead_.

Nesterin snapped the rabbit’s neck, trying to be quick about it. Cruel survival, she thought. Nature red in tooth and claw. The little neck of the quick little rabbit snapped so easily and she thought of wolves.

 _You think Mythal’s foci remains_? Nesterin asked Amaril.

 _I don’t know. They sacked the temple the day she died. Many of our tomes were taken. Many of her things were picked apart by vultures we’d thought of as friends. But perhaps Solas believes the orb can be recovered and he is searching_. _We should find it first. I’ve seen it, I know how it looks. We should smash it to pieces._

When Nesterin returned to camp, she found that Gaelbana had thrown away all the firewood, scattering it amongst the trees once more.

“No fire,” said Gaelbana sternly. “Fire has smell. Fire has bright lights. Colours and yellow and orange. He’ll see the fire from miles and miles away. Smell it in the air.”

“Who’ll see the fire?”

“Got no need for fire himself. He eats the souls raw. He’s watching us now, I can feel him.”

“Who?”

“Not my soul. I keep to the dark. I keep running. Running, running on and on. Never stoppin’. Never restin’. Not til the terrible time ahead…” Gaelbana stood up sharply, as if she made to make her escape, but she moved so slowly that Nesterin was able to catch her and hold her.

She kept her arms around Gaelbana until the old woman stopped twitching frantically and trying to pick at the cuts on her scalp.

“It’s alright,” she soothed. “It’s alright. I won’t let him catch you, I promise. But you need to eat something.”

“Mmm…yes…meat. Blood and guts and meat.”

Gaelbana turned to the rabbit and casually flicked her hand at it. A bright white spark of lightning surged from her finger and hit the dead rabbit. Instantaneously, the smell of cooked meat flooded the air as the rabbit boiled from inside to out.

It made the meat taste strange. Strange like the ripples in the fade that flooded the air. As the two of them picked apart the scorched carcass of the rabbit, Nesterin wondered who this mad woman was. She’d kidnapped her but seemed to have no discernible reason for it. She ranted and raved to herself and yet could cast incredibly proficiently. Who was she so scared of? And why was the mark of Dirthamen carved so roughly into her face?

 _Can’t see the wood for the trees,_ said Amaril bitterly _. Let’s try and find a road tomorrow. Take the old woman with you if you must, but get out of these woods. Get out of these woods and find the foci, I beg you._

That night she saw the wolf again in her dreams. Watching her from a distance, as always, shrouded in darkness. She felt the rush of silence and the lonely ache of want, until it was broken and she heard…like a ripple on the wind. “Do not linger, there is danger here”

In truth though, Nesterin didn’t mind the woods.

In the deep forest the sky vanished almost completely and the brief snatches of grey seemed like scattered pieces of a puzzle. The heady fragrance of herbs and plants was intoxicating and almost made her forget herself. She liked that there was no one to please and no unfriendly stares. The air was clear and the cold was bracing. She could drink openly from her skin flask and not feel a strange sense of shame in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t mind the old woman’s company, either. Gaelbana had simple needs, food and rest and someone to stop her from scratching her head. On the third day, they came upon a fresh water stream and Nesterin managed to coax her into it. Years of mud and grime sluiced off the old woman’s body and into the water. It was satisfying, in it’s simple, uncomplicated way, to be of use.

But Gaelbana screamed in the night and Nesterin she worried about her sisters. If the Dalish had turned on them in her absence. And she worried about Falon, Deshanna and Hazel. She worried about Cassandra and Leliana and all of her friends. And she worried about Solas because Amaril kept her mind upon him, night and day.

Whatever Gaelbana was, whatever she had done, she was running from her problems and it was not a luxury that Nesterin could afford. 

 _Flemeth would know_ , said Nesterin to Amaril one night.

_Yes. Only… I feel a **fuzz** when I think of Flemeth. As if my knowledge of her is obscured somehow. I don’t know what that means. But it’s unpleasant._

_The feeling is not unusual as far as Flemeth goes. I sometimes feel like that about her daughter. Leliana will be our best hope at locating her. But you’re not saying that the Dalish suddenly becoming mages is just some shiny toy meant to distract me?_

_I think we need to consider the option that it serves many purposes. Yes, it’s an effective distraction. You’ll be busy both diplomatically and emotionally. And then there’s the possibility that Solas has a use for these elves._

_It could be a clue to where he thinks the orb is kept. Places with large elven populations. Val Royeaux, Amaranthine, Minrathous? I need to talk to Leliana._

And in the night, the wolf begged her, “Do not linger here.”

Galvanised by this knowledge, by the formulation of a plan, Nesterin resolved that they would find a town soon. The woods were growing lighter, the sun slipped through the canopy more easily and there was a new wrinkle. Her alcohol supply had gone dry.

Gaelbana must have sensed they were drawing closer to people too, because she became more and more anxious. She sniffed the air and smeared mud on her face. She turned around ten times at clearings and spat on the ground. She stopped to carve strange shapes in the trees.

Finally, Nesterin managed to hear a clear snatch of her mutterings,

“Fen’ Harel tel garas solasan. Fen’Harel ir abelas”

It made Nesterin feel cold. She realised that the strange shapes carved in the trees were dogs, that the man she feared would sniff her out was the Dread Wolf. Even the myth of him, she realised with horror, could drive a person mad.

“Please don’t fear Fen’ Harel, Gaelbana,” she said. “Don’t hide in the woods because of him. You don’t need to run anymore.”

Gaelbana turned her scarred face on Nesterin and she began to laugh and laugh and laugh. “No good runnin’ is it? No good hidin’. I’m smelling my death and it’s put the fear in me. Smelling my death closer and closer.”

She stopped and she sat heavily on the ground and wouldn’t budge. Patting the ground beside her, Gaelbana sighed.

“My death’s around my legs. Inside my clothes. Foolish to think otherwise. Sit, da’len. Sit, pretty bird. I need to tell a tale.”

Nesterin did sit, finding a patch of grass and crossing her legs like a child at the foot of her Keeper. Gaelbana looked as if a wave of calm had come over her, her eyes seemed to shine a little brighter as she spoke,

“I knew that when the skies started spittin out demons, the wrath of heaven was comin’ right for me. Never known much, but I knew that right enough. The Dread Wolf shoots a slow arrow but he shoots it straight and true. And it always finds you in the end….”

So, she sat and she listened to the whole of Gaelbana’s miserable story. How Solas had come to their clan and befriended her. She listened to Gaelbana describe the dream of Tevinter he’d created for her, and thought of the places in the fade that she had gone with him too. As Gaelbana described the resentment her clan felt for him, Nesterin could picture it all too readily. The Dalish were not known for their trust, she knew that quite well. She thought about how she’d turned on him to save her own and when it came to the teeth of Fen’Harel she dreaded to think of it.

She couldn’t picture Solas frightened. Sometimes in the heat of battle she might hear a deep, trembling shout telling her that Blackwall was injured or that Cole needed them, or sometimes only ever very occasionally, he might have called “Nesterin, I need help!”.

His fear was hard to imagine and she didn’t think he would have been. But his hurt was not. It looked like the days after Wisdom had been destroyed, when he slept in the spaces where the spirit used to be, when she told him he did not need to mourn alone and he hung his head and confessed to her that he had not been able to trust anyone for a long time.

 “I’d be lookin’ at me that way if I heard it too,” mumbled Gaelbana. “I did it though. Didn’t I? Killed the world when I tried to save my sorry skin.”

“Yes,” said Nesterin hollowly. She knew she should have lied but she couldn't. “Yes. You killed the world.” She swallowed, “How…”

There were so many _hows_ of it all that she wanted to ask. And she wanted to sigh,

 _Solas._ _Oh, my Solas, I am so sorry that the Dalish let you down._

He’d been kind to them. She would have killed for that kindness. He’d shared openly things that she’d taken months to pry out of him with her fingers, like shucking an oyster for pearls. And in return? They’d turned his own teeth upon him.

 “I must have reminded him of you sometimes,” Nesterin muttered bitterly. “He must have been scared I could change at any moment, I could have had him chased away and hurt for saying or doing the wrong thing. He lied and he lied, and…he was desperate to tell me the truth, I know he was. But where had the truth gotten him before?”

Gaelbana was weeping openly now, plunging her hands into her hair, raking them through the knots and scabs.

“I been runnin’ from the Dread Wolf and I’m tired. He’s in my head. Pushing me on. He’s in my dreams, making me go forwards and I’m tired. Tired of runnin’ from myself too. I hate what I did. I hate it worse than blood.”

 Nesterin didn’t stop her. She pitied the old woman because she was mad and pitiful- but deep down, the old woman knew better. She could have _been_ better. She _should_ have been better, as their Keeper. Frightened people, pitiful cowards should not have the power to run a man to his death. And yet they did. And the world suffered for it every day….

“How could you have been such a coward? You killed the world Gaelbana. You doomed us all”

Nesterin couldn’t look at the other woman any longer. There was a small possibility she might lose herself, and maybe she’d do more than _say_ hurtful things to Gaelbana if she stayed. Irritation from a lack of alcohol pulsed in her forehead and made her chest feel strange. So, she took her blankets and her cloak and began the business of constructing a shelter away from Gaelbana for the night.

Laying down, she thought of blood and broken glass. She thought about his skin and his eyes. She pressed her hand to her face and wanted desperately to hold him.

 _It’s good,_ said Amaril.

_Is it? I don’t think I’ll ever forgive the Dalish for what they did to him. So I don’t have a clue how he must feel about it.”_

_There’s something in this, I’m sure of it. Something we know that he doesn’t know we know._

_If you say so._

When she slept, he seemed closer than ever. She dreamed of these exact woods and of following the trail of dogs that Gaelbana had carved into the trees. By day, she only noticed the green of the leaves and the carpets of violets. But in her dream, she became more aware that this forest was ancient. The trees were thick and old with roots that were twisted. It might once have been filled with bird-song, mythical beasts and the tall figures of ancient elves. Traces of glory lingered like echoes and ghosts. By a clearing, she spotted the wolf, stalking silently from the shadows. Wordlessly, the wolf looked at her, its eyes gleaming with the cold indifference of nature. Wordlessly she looked at him and placed a finger on her lips.

Then she woke up.  

It was early and there was a chafing cold in the air. A little frost had settled over the lichen in the night but it had already begun to melt in the pale light of a pink sun. She checked on her snares to find another blood-damp rabbit in the trap- this one had died in the night, and she picked it up and went to find Gaelbana.

“Wake up!” she called out harshly as she walked into the clearing that she had left Gaelbana in that night. Her patience had well and truly run out. “Wake up! No more coddling! You’re going to eat some hot food, cooked on a damn fire and we’re going to look for the road. I’m taking you to a doctor in the nearest town. Today.”

Gaelbana’s pack was on the ground and her staff was neatly laid beside it. They were the only traces of the woman in the clearing.

“Gaelbana!” Nesterin twisted and took a path into the woods immediately, her hand cupped around her mouth as she called out. “Gaelbana!!”

She didn’t stop to think. She just searched. But the stillness of the woods seemed to foreshadow a truth that Nesterin already knew.

After twenty minutes, she found the tree. It was an old, thick oak. As thick and as old as a vhenedal- and maybe it had been one once. The tree had a knotted trunk, a labyrinth of branches and bright green moss threading between its roots.  A rope was tied around one of the branches and the body hung still, not disturbed by the breeze.

A ball of fire bubbled up in Nesterin’s hand and she aimed it at a part of the rope, letting the fire burn through. The body slumped to the ground and Nesterin ran towards it. But it was too late.

Gaelbana’s face was swollen. Her tongue had slipped out slightly from between her lips and was black and purple. Her lips were blue. A blood vessel had erupted in one of her eyes, and a cloud of redness seemed to obscure her vision.

“Elgar- fucking-nan,” whispered Nesterin angrily as the tears slipped down her face. “Elgar-fucking-nan.”

* * *

She spent the better part of the day digging a hole for Gaelbana. The ground was hard so she took up Gaelbana’s staff and used magic to break it before scooping up the dirt with her hand. It needed to be deep so that the animals wouldn’t dig down and find her. Gaelbana would hate to think of the wolves pawing at her corpse.

When the last handful of dirt went in over the body, Nesterin stood up and sighed.

What a lonely end to a lonely woman.

“I’m sorry that you left your clan,” said Nesterin, over the old woman’s grave. “I’m sorry that your child was taken from you. I’m sorry that a moment of weakness and fear came to define you. I like to think that you must have been a good keeper, once. At the end, you tried to be a good friend. I hope you find peace.”

Nesterin couldn’t find a sapling to place atop the grave, so instead she buried an acorn and had to hope that it would take root. Was this, she wondered, the fate of all that crossed the Dread Wolf’s path? People would ask her what had happened and she wondered what she’d say.

 _I met the woman who killed the world,_ might be a little too strong.

 _I got distracted by a mad old woman?_ Suggested Amaril, _Like a toddler with some brightly coloured blocks._

And then, quite suddenly, as Amaril spoke to her, it came from out of the trees.

Nesterin was dimly aware of the rush, followed by a dull sort of sound and then, present, and clear and sharp, pain exploded in her abdomen. She cried out, startled and agonised as she looked down to see the arrow, stuck fast in the soft tissue just above her right hip.

Looking frantically around, Nesterin cast her barrier, but the wound had made her slower and clumsy. The air erupted with a dim pulse and a swirl of blue but she was too late. A second arrow slipped through and struck her again. In the throat, this time.

She choked and swallowed, felt her airways constrict and rush with blood. A form from above, obscured by a tree branch moved minutely and she cast desperately, channelling her energy through to Gaelbana’s staff, causing a blast of fire.

It hit its target just as Nesterin lost her footing and fell to the ground beside Gaelbana’s grave. From out of the trees fell a figure in black. She sent forth another bolt of energy and the smell of burning flesh filled up her nose. She couldn’t breathe, she gasped and clutched instinctively at her throat. Her fingers became sticky with blood.

Dragging herself forwards and breathing, breathing, breathing, shallow and wet, she examined the body that had fallen through the trees, noting- breathe- the black clothing draped like wings, turning it over to reveal a hooded mask over the figure’s head- breathe- shaped to resemble a beak.

An Antivan Crow in an Orleasian wood.

A horrible rattle ran through her and cold sweat prickled on Nesterin’s forehead. She looked down at her stomach and saw, amongst the blood, a strange sick blackness swimming in her wound.

Poison, she thought. Unmistakeably.

 


	13. May The Dread Wolf Take You

_I don’t suppose…. any of you know...in your infinite ancient wisdom...a cure for...whatever...poison this is,_ Nesterin asked the voices in her head. She sat slumped against the trunk of a great tree- watching the heavy rise and fall of her chest with a mind to keep doing it, and to keep breathing for as long as she could.

 _Spider venom, adder venom, deathroot and necrotic flesh. You will be driven mad before you die,_ whispered one of Mythal’s servants.

_That’s nice. I think I’d like a second opinion, though. Amaril?_

Nesterin could feel her own blood seeping out of her, onto the forest floor. Her breath had a kind of reedy music to it now like a crudely made pipe or flute. She could feel the pressure of the head of the arrow and the scratch of it against her windpipe. Time had seemed to slow down, it balanced woozily on the tip of a dangerous equilibrium where a sound or a movement or a sudden change in the wind might send the whole world hurtling to the ground.

 _If you die...what’s going to happen to me?_ Fretted Amaril. _I already died once and I can’t say I liked that very much at all._

They’ll write a song about her, she thought dimly. She pictured the black poison on the tip of the arrow travelling up her throat, reaching her tongue and nose and eyes and brain. A song about the tragic end of the Inquisitor, felled like a deer by an arrow in the woods. The slow arrow. She let out a bark that was not quite cough, not quite laugh and blood hit her pants leg. Why did it have to be an arrow, of all things?

She thought of her little, bound book of herbs and dried flowers, the one that she’d burned because Solas had given it to her. She thought of the garden at Skyhold and of old Dalish remedies. Gargle with vinegar, chew on ginger root, brew a tea of milk thistle infusion. But there was no vinegar or ginger root. And she hadn’t the strength to drag her body upwards in a probably hopeless search for milk thistle.

 _Oh._ A tear slipped down her cheek. Oh, it was too cruel. The poison was slow and the bleeding was slow and she was getting lost in the hope that she was winning, just by clinging on by her fingertips. She cast a pitiful healing light about her body, mostly in order to stay conscious, and she could see the colours starting to bleed out in the forest, like wet paint on damp clay, like the visions of black and white that the humans saw in the crossroads. She heard footsteps in the leaves and the shuffle of lichen.

Her head felt heavy and she couldn’t move it, not even when the toe of a shoe stopped beside her. Not even when the palm of a hand materialised in front of her.

She thought she knew that hand. So she knew that the poison was working.

That hand had healed burns on her wrist and had gone twining through her hair. That hand had pointed to passages in books of ancient history and had been smoothed up and down her back. That hand had detailed wolves and swords along the rotunda walls and had tripped and danced delicately between the folds of her sex.

"Come," Solas held out his hand to her and he implored, “Before the band stops playing. Dance with me.”

* * *

 

Nesterin heard a gentle Orlesian melody of strings and woodwind, both bitter and sweet all at once. She felt the light tickle of a cool night wind across her face and looked out towards mountains and a vast lake. Solas was dressed in red, a blue sash tied across his chest and around his waist. There was that ridiculous helmet sat upon his head, she remembered it. And she remembered the sweet taste of wine on his lips.

Was this a memory? Was it a dream? Nesterin was dressed in white this time. Silk drapings dripped from her shoulders and the dress was tied around the middle with a gold chain. Her hair was loose and dotted with fine beads. She touched her throat and felt the delicate chain of her quartz amulet.

And realised she had her arm again. 

 _“_ The arrow _…”_

“It’s Halamshiral,” Solas told her, gently. Slowly he reached out for her hand and his gaze was warm. There was no regret, no hurt or worry across his face. It was if he had never gone away. Or better still, as if he’d never lied. His shoulders were straighter without the weight of a secret, and his smile came as easily as a flower plucked from the dirt.“The air smells sweet, there’s fine wine and pleasant music.”

Muscle memory made her go willingly towards him, holding the straight, formal, pose of an Orlesian waltz, the way she’d been taught so many years ago. As they danced, striding and circling, stepping and spinning gracefully together, there was still some distance between them. Space enough to fill with another person. Space enough to fill with a thousand years and a great gulf of secrets. Whichever way you wanted to look it.

Yet, she felt the solidity of his bones beneath his clothes and she knew that she loved him with that same, heavy, certainty.

“The empress died….and we danced..”

A wave of pain trampled over at her like a herd of angry Druffalo. Her abdomen screamed out and her lungs screamed out. _Breathe_ , something told her. _Breathe. Breathe. Breathe._ Shaking, she fell against him.

When the distance was broken, Solas pulled her close, plunging his hands into the loose fabric of her dress, burying his face against her neck and inside of her hair. She gripped onto him and felt a sense of falling and of being anchored all at once.

He remained that way, tight as a second skin around her as the pain coursed and then subsided. He held her when it was gone and lingered for several moments more as she let her hands drift along his back to feel the surface of him. Solas pulled away, only a fraction, to press his hand on the side of her face and kiss her softly on the mouth. She returned it hungrily, gasping for him like the oxygen she needed so desperately.

He kissed her lips, her cheeks, the corner of her mouth and her throat and she felt like a lump of rock being carved into something that looked a little like life. When he pulled away he was smiling, bemused and confused, with eyes that sparkled in the moonlight.

“You continue to surprise me,” he said.

The music played on. They pulled apart and continued the dance.They rotated slowly together and, spinning, she saw the doors that had led into the winter palace. A blue curtain, like a veil, billowed lazily. Behind it she caught snatches of a swirling darkness- the weight and the pull of it like no colour she had ever known.

“What is this place?”

“Somewhere between life and death,” Solas’ smile slipped away into nothing “My people will do all they can for your body. But I wanted to create something like comfort for your mind, if you should…I didn’t want you to be alone.”

 _If you should die..._ was what he meant to say. She knew it.

Nesterin thought of falling into the fade at Adament, of the graves inscribed with the greatest fears of her friends and the one that read, _Solas: Dying Alone_. 

“I’m not going to die,” said Nesterin.

“No,” Solas agreed. “No, I don’t think that you are.”

Nesterin moved away from him quickly.  This was only a dream but a rush of cold came over her and made her shiver. She wrapped her arms around herself and moved away towards the edge of the balcony. The balustrades were too white to really be Halamshiral. The smoke of the city had crept in and had begun to taint them with grey. When she woke, Solas would be gone and all of this, all of his sweet words and soft kisses, was simply a prolonged kind of masochism.

“A shame for you,” she said bitterly.

“Nesterin, I need you to know that it was not on my orders that the Crow attempted to assassinate you. I came to know about it...I tried to warn you…”

“I know,” she said. She turned so she could see him. Really see. Each minute detail of his face, the separate pieces that came together to make a man she’d thought she’d known once. “I met Gaelbana.”

His jaw twitched. “I know,” he said cooly.

“She’s dead.”

“By her own hand. Afraid of the wrath of the monster from children’s stories. In that, at least, I believe she was wise.”

He placed his hand on her waist, gently willing her to dance with him again.

“If I’d have been wise, I would have feared you from the start,” he said. “The others did. You were small and frail and bound in chains but they feared you. I only thought you looked beautiful when you were dreaming.”

“Sweet talker,” she looked down at her feet. They were bare underneath her dress, but the floor felt quite warm and pleasant to the touch. “I was just a useless piece of skin to you, wrapped around your precious anchor.”

“That is a touch less romantic. I suppose this is the great issue of history, though. Where do we separate the truth from the romance?”

“Right. The Orlesian drama of it all. The fancy details and sparkly things…” she said and Solas laughed. Not unkindly, not at all. But it _felt_ so cruel. She put her hand on his chest, a barrier to keep him at arm’s length.

She looked at her arm between them and willed it away, watching the remnants drift into the air like falling petals from a branch. 

There was no point in romanticising that particular detail. Solas flinched, oh so minutely. 

“Gaelbana didn’t do it because she was frightened," said Nesterin. "Yes, she ran because she was frightened, but she died because she was sorry.”

Nothing in Solas’ face betrayed that he believed her. And that, she realised, was the soul of the whole problem.

“What have you done, Solas?” she demanded. “Why has my clan changed? Is this some drawn-out torture? Because you _promised_ that-”

He frowned at her and shook his head.

“-That is not a question I can answer, you know that.”

He had promised her he wasn’t a monster. He promised her that, if her world had to die, then they would be allowed to do it in comfort. But what did the Dread Wolf know of dying? He was ageless and ancient and it had never touched him. Nesterin thought of her mother screaming and bleeding as she birthed a dead child, she thought of charred bodies on the road through the Hinterlands and of Gaelbana’s bloated purple tongue. _comfort_ , he said. Such a funny joke.

“And you have other things to worry about,” Solas continued. “An Antivan Crow followed you to Alarthvhen with the explicit orders to publicly assassinate you. When you fled, he tracked you and shot you.”

“Varric always calls me Bullseye, my face has always been the target.”

“You’ve been betrayed. The orders came from Orlais. Somebody is willing to pay a lot of money to see you dead.”

“They can get in line behind the Dalish, then.”

“ _Please, Vhenan_. You’re too careless with yourself!” Solas begged her angrily. “It's as if you don't see what you are! I know this sounds as if I am trying to draw attention away from myself but I...I will not see your light snuffed out senselessly as a pawn in someone else’s political game.”

“Because you had another death in mind for me?”

Solas huffed and it sounded, just faintly, like a snarl.

The sudden rush of his movement in her direction was a surprise, but her instincts were keen here. She pulled back as sharply as he came towards her, their bodies autonomously enacting another sort of dance. Chase and hide. Flee and hunt. Love and kill. A stab of hurt wrote itself plainly across his face when he saw that she had flinched away from him.

But he came towards her again, slowly. Watching her, waiting until her defences melted. Tentatively, he touched her face with his hand, and then, when her heart burst and she tilted her head, he kissed her. Swiftly, their roles reversed and _he_ was the one without oxygen.

Pulling away he stroked her face, he swallowed and said, “This has to be the last time, Vhenan. I'm so sorry."

And she said, “Tell me how to stop you, Solas.”

And then, just like that, he was gone.


	14. Être à l’ouest

There were sheets underneath her. And a thin mattress stuffed with straw. Slow and dizzy, she slipped back into the waking world, lying on her back and looking up at the wooden beams and plaster in the ceiling of a neat little room. A pleasant warmth filled up her nostrils. It was the rich, sweet scent of something nostalgic.

“The end of short winter days and the start of long winter nights. The crackling dance of the fire in the hearth and the wool blanket around my shoulders.  Sweetly, softly, sipping, slipping. Felas-sss-sera,” said a soft, wistful voice that she knew very well.

“ _Cole_ ,” rasped Nesterin. Tentatively, she shifted to try and get a good look at him and she felt a terrible aching in her side. Something dripped from her throat and for a moment she thought she was still bleeding until she touched it with her fingertips. Upon examination she saw that it was green and it smelled pleasantly fresh, a liquor dripped from the bundled poultice bandage around her neck.

Still sad, still strange and still impossibly kind, Cole stood up and went over to her. He had a mug of Felaserra for her- _proper_ Felaserra-with rum and halla milk, sorghum and cinnamon. She sniffed it gratefully, but couldn’t sip it due to the aching in her throat. She smiled and went to thank him, but he stopped her.  

“You shouldn't talk. The arrows went in cold but they came out hot. And very wet.  I said you’d want to keep them. I put them there.”

He pointed to a crude dressing table in the corner. It was draped with a woven green cloth, with a little tin wash basin propped upon its surface. Next to the wash basin was another neatly folded white cloth napkin, this one spotted with the faintest imprint of blood. There were two arrowheads lying on top, both of them clean and sharp and glistening black.

What a strange thing to think to ask to keep, Nesterin thought, bemused. But she thought about it and she realised Cole wasn’t exactly wrong either. She could take those glistening black stones and make something from them. She could shape them into a symbol for her staff, smooth out their sharp edges and make them soft. And think about another time she didn’t die.

Funny creature for seeing something buried so deep inside her before she did. She had _missed_ Cole.

And who was there better to nurse her than a spirit of compassion?

She wondered if he’d come to her freely or if Solas had asked him. She wondered how she’d got in this room and where the room was. It was like waking up in Haven all over again, blinking and finding herself in a strange shemlen bed, in a strange room with the snow from the mountain blowing around the window sill.

And she wondered where Solas was now. What did he mean when he spoke to her, right before vanishing all over again?

 _“This has to be the last time…”_ he had said to her. Why?

She felt- as she had done, dying in the woods- that sense of time slowing down, of life balancing woozily on a knife edge. Once again she opened her mouth, so that she could beg Cole for an answer, but once again he stopped her.

“You don't _need_ to talk. Languages, voices, lies and mistranslations all tangled in your head like rashvine and no way to navigate the knots. But I’m helping. Helping where the hurt is.”

She took a little Felaserra, just letting it lightly tickle the surface of her tongue. But it was enough. Laced with a sleeping draught, it made her pass into the heavy dreamless sleep of the dead.

When she woke next, it was dark. The wind raged outside and the hard, naked branches of a tree scraped across the window like spindly fingers. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she made out the shape of a figure in the darkness. Shoulders, hands, head, perched on the chair by the dresser. Still slow with sleep and pain she called out to the dark,

“Solas?”

“This has to be the last time, Vhenan,” said Cole from his place in the chair. “He promised he would never forget her. He calls himself a fool for saying so and now he wishes that he could. Now every day is like a harrowing. She teases, she tempts, she stays so close to him.  So close he could just reach out to her. Like reaching off a cliff, and falling, falling, falling into her.”

Nesterin held her breath and felt a terrible, horrible ache in her chest. Cole continued,

“The way her hair feels on his cheek, her smile and rolls of the waves of her laughter.  She’s beautiful. So beautiful. And she’s boundless, surrounding, smothering, drowning.”

Nesterin felt hollow, like her insides had all been scooped out. The feeling of loss never went away, it only ever grew bigger.

 _When a man has two faces, he takes care only to show you the best one.,_ Amaril said bitterly. _Yes, he loves you alright._ _Loves you enough to lie and lie and lie. Loves you enough to put a baby in your belly and leave you to clean up the mess. Loves you enough to take your arm, to send the Qunari after you and Orlais after you and the Dalish after you and to burn your entire world…._

“Oh,” said Cole dimly,  looking up from underneath his hat. “Shouting? Loudly. In the dark...pushing and pushing and pushing through. I remember that. And _she_ remembers... _Amaril._ Yes, Amaril. Like a yellow weed that grows in the temple. Like a promise broken and kept. Like a fever that spreads….”

 _What?_ Asked Amaril, panicked. _How does he know my name? Make him stop that!_

“Make him stop that,” said Cole in a flat voice, blinking.

_Shut up._

“Shut up! Nesterin, what is he doing?” Cole went on, quickly. “These are _my_ thoughts. I made them. He can’t have them!”

“ _Cole_ ,” said Nesterin sternly, her voice still barely more than a harsh whisper. “She asked you to stop. Amaril is helping me and…. and I know she lives in my head, but she deserves her privacy all the same.”

She sounded, Nesterin realised, utterly, utterly insane. But, she supposed, if anyone could understand it, it would be Cole.

Even the talking had been too much for her, she realised. Her throat burned again, accompanied by another ache in her hip.Sensing her distress, Cole stood up from his place in the corner and went over to her. He placed a kind hand on her head and he whispered,

“ _Sleep._ ”

* * *

 

When she woke, she was in yet _another_ room.

This time the ceiling was all wood, a puzzle of loose damp boards held together with some scrawny beams. It was a little colder in this room and a draught slipped through from the window and from underneath the frame of the door. It was smaller and grimier too, though it looked as if someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to cheer the place up. An ugly landscape of a meadow was hanging in the corner and a mismatch of crudely made doilies had been frantically strewn about the place in a hurry. There seemed to be no trace of Cole at all.

But that had always been one of his particular talents.

As she roused herself, she heard a gasp and a thud as something dropped sharply in front of her.

Pulling herself up with quite a lot of effort- though she could actually pull herself up now without a pain exploding in her side- she saw a small hunched figure on the wooden floor next to a dropped pile of yet more doilies.

“Lady Herald,” Nesterin heard the elven serving girl murmur and she was struck by a horrible, terrible, flash of deja vu.

“No,” she groaned. “No...no...no…don't do that…”

“I’m sorry,” stammered the elven girl. She was young, only thirteen or so with yellow hair and a pale, pinched face. “I didn’t think you’d be awake. I’m so sorry.”

“Please stop,” Nesterin rasped. If this was Haven she would actually scream.

Fortunately, however, the doorknob turned and on the other side of the door stood another elf. She wore a dark grey cowl, a scabbard and a set of heavy-duty gloves. Nesterin was sure she knew her face. Jana, the girl at Crestwood who’d wanted to join the Grey Wardens but became one of Leliana’s instead.

“You’re up,” said Jana with a nod and the nervous little servant girl fled the room. “Good. I’ll send word over at once. The Nightingale will be pleased to hear the news.”

Jana looked harder than before, Nesterin thought, or maybe she imagined it. Harder and stronger and polished up like the sharp point of an arrow. She had wanted a purpose, that Nesterin could remember very well. Nesterin hoped she had found one in the Inquisition, and she hoped even more that she had one still- now that the Inquisition was gone.

“It’s nice to see you again, Jana. You look very well,” Nesterin rasped.

“And you look...alive, Your Worship.”

That made Nesterin wheeze out a chuckle. She could just imagine what a fright she was, each of her one breaths was audible and sounded arduous. There were probably clumps in her hair and a sickly pallor in her skin, the bandage at her throat lurched uncomfortably as she drew breath.

“There’s a message for you here, My Lady,” said Jana. She handed Nesterin a neatly folded letter, printed with Leliana’s hand.

 _Nesterin,_ the message read:

_My people found the crow you left for us in the woods.  Apart from the body, very few traces remain of who paid to see you murdered. No trace that I could follow, at least. The Crows are renowned for their discretion and their success rates. Whoever wanted you killed wanted it done secretly and wanted it done well. I , however, have done better._

_A trifling matter, several vials of poison used to coat the heads of the arrows that you were shot with, was a detail that I could not shake. Antivan Crows are particular with their poisons and this one wasn’t one I’d heard of the Crows using before. This , combined with the Orlesian glasswork of the viol, has led me to suspect your would-be-murderer was hired by somebody with ties to Orlais. And, given that they specified a particular poison, this is someone who holds a specific and somewhat sentimental grudge against you. This will not be the last attempt on your life, so if we are to find them, I would prefer to do it sooner rather than later._

_Think of any people you know who might fit this type as I step next into my role as Chantry Sister. I think you must be somewhat familiar with the festival of Funalis, where we remember the death of Andraste. As her herald, Divine Victoria has asked for you to attend the remembrances with her in Val Royeaux._

_Before you say no- as I am sure you want to- I would remind you that Divine Victoria and the Chantry may be our last powerful ally in the fight against Solas. I would also remind you that Divine Victoria is desperate to make a success of her newly formed circles and to exercise her control over the mage population. If she were to discover that this population has drastically increased, all we have to rely on is our shared personal history._

_Also, Val Royeaux  is very beautiful during Funalis. At night, the harbour front becomes illuminated by the glow of a thousand bonfires, and the water looks just as if it’s ablaze. It is something that is quite worth seeing._

_When you are strong enough, I will make the arrangements with Divine Victoria and send for you before the festival begins,_

_Leliana._

Nesterin could imagine Leliana being incredibly satisfied with her deduction based on Orlesian glassworks and Antivan poisons. She’d be disappointed to find out that Solas had already told her that the order had come from Orlais. But it corroborated his story. So he was capable of telling the truth if only once in awhile, she thought bitterly

But, still, why had he _said_ it? _“This has to be the last time…I’m sorry”_

Nesterin absolutely did not want to go to Val Royeaux for the festival. Not if it was to perform like a circus bear for the Chantry and for Vivienne. The Andraste stuff would be unbearable, setting her teeth on edge, making her knife-ears feel flatter than ever as they bowed and kneeled and made her feel like the hideous fraud she was. Along with that, the Crows could slip easily into the throng of people and strike her anywhere. They could pose as servants and poison her food. Any dark alleyway or point in the harbour or shadowy corner of Val Royeaux might become her grave.

But what choice did she have? Leliana was right. Vivienne held so much power now and that power could either be a great help to her or a terrible hindrance.

From the hall, Nesterin heard the creak of footsteps and could just make out a few more voices.

Behind Jana, suddenly came a flurry of activity. Three messes of clothes and curls and ears and limbs hurried through the door as Mirwen, Bel and Laisa crowded around her bed.  They didn’t know quite what to do with the bed, she noticed, watching them try to figure out whether they could sit on it, or stand by it, or even touch it. Mirwen dropped to the floor and sat cross-legged while Laisa poked and prodded at the doilies. Bel simply stood shyly in the doorway, as if she didn’t trust the room at all. Nesterin was happy to see them, if not a little jarred. Jana, the Inquisition agent, and her sisters together in the same room felt strange, like two worlds coming together that had never met before.

“Finally!” sighed Mirwen. “That took days! They wouldn’t let us have an aravel, they said we had to stay at the inn if we wanted to wait for you. Have you ever been to an inn?”

“Yes, I’ve been to an inn,” said Nesterin with a weak chuckle.

“Shem’s shit _in_ their houses,” whispered Bel, horrified. “They just shit in a pot. And then someone comes and _collects_ it. _Why?_ I haven’t eaten in days. I’m not _touching_ the food here.”

“I like the food,” shrugged Laisa. “Meat pie all dripping with lovely brown gravy.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” shivered Bel.

“This is for you,” said Laisa, chucking a brown satchel at Nesterin. Inside of it she found her staff, something else she’d crafted for herself in the armory at Skyhold. She was annoyed to find that someone- undoubtedly one of her Dalish captors- had poked out some of the glass beading around the grip, probably hoping they were jewels. Along with that, was her Spirit Blade. Nesterin stroked the handle, happy to have it back in possession.

At the bottom of the bag, she found something else, something that was not hers but might have been one day. Deshanna’s sylvanwood ring had been slipped into the bag. The Keeper’s reminder that the Dread Wolf must be kept at bay. She put the ring on her finger. The same one that a human might wear their wedding band.

“Is Falon alright?” Nesterin asked her sisters.

“Fine. He’s in the stables.”

Relieved, Nesterin sank back. But then she started to think:

So she’d been here for days? What had happened to the other room? How had they found her? She scrutinised her sisters and they looked shaken. All three of them seemed incredibly uncomfortable to be in the shemlen inn and as unquestionably Dalish with their rough green clothing and bare feet as Nesterin had felt at Haven. But they were alive and they were whole, she thought.

Until she looked a little closer at Laisa by the doilies and saw that she had a mess of bruises and scratches on her chin and forehead. At the sight of them, a curl of anger unfurled like a flower in Nesterin’s chest.

“Why are you all here? Did something happen to you at the Arlathvhen?”

Mirwen and Laisa looked at one another darkly.

“We…. had to get out of there in a hurry...we weren’t really welcome...after you left us there,” stammered Bel.

Sharply, Nesterin took a breath. She’d hoped that the Dalish wouldn’t take it out on her sisters. It wasn’t fair or right to blame them for her sins. She’d hoped that they’d see her as some sort of lone agent, as a lone dissenter like they’d seen her father so many years ago. But it seemed she’d hoped wrong.

“I am so _so_ sorry,” she said heavily as she looked down at the sheets, “I had meant to stay and put things right. I should never have left you to them all alone...”

“No, we know,” said Laisa. “The Keepers were angry at first. _So_ angry. At you and us and Deshanna... but mainly you, of course. They tried to put Deshanna on trial instead.”

“She was amazing,” added Mirwen quickly, watching Nesterin’s face fall with horror. “She told them they were all lunatics. She said she’d seen shit like they wouldn’t believe in Wycome and that she wasn’t scared of them now. She wasn’t scared of anything. She said that if you'd gone it’s because you were Dalish through and through and you weren’t going to submit to anyone, not even them so they could all fuck right off.”

“How did that go?” asked Nesterin.

“Not well,” shrugged Laisa “But then Jana and the others came and they brought the Dead Crow and said you’d been kidnapped and shot. So it wasn’t even your fault. It was just some rich Orlesians or Nevarrans or something.”

“You burned his whole face. It was disgusting. I _really_ need you to teach me how to do that,” said Mirwen with glee.

“But if it turned out alright, why did you have to leave so suddenly?”

“Laisa got in a fight,” said Bel. They all turned to look at the youngest of them, and Laisa crossed her arms, and held up, her brown face defiantly bare.

“Since they didn’t have you, they figured they could get together and mark me,” said Laisa darkly.

Nesterin had known her sisters her whole life and could only ever see their differences; Mirwen favoured Mamae most, her face was squarer and her nose was much flatter, but her curls were looser than Laisa’s tight coils. Bel was more delicate looking, with strikingly beautiful dark brown- almost black eyes and small oval lips whilst Laisa was taller and thinner than the rest of them, with sharper cheekbones and a long, awkward neck. They all looked so different to Nesterin, but, she supposed, at a pinch, to an angry horde of Dalish any one of them would have done in her stead. Especially Laisa, who still wore her pretty face so defiantly bare.

“After that Elandrin helped us get away,” said Bel. “And he helped us here to you.”

“I won’t ever get my vallaslin until _I_ want to,” said Laisa staunchly. “Not for anyone. Not on anyone’s life. And after what Deshanna told us, I’m glad I never did.”

It took a moment for the penny to drop. But then it did. They knew the meaning behind the Vallaslin, Deshanna had told them. Nesterin wondered who else she had told- she’d seemed so adamant that Nesterin should not reveal it openly that Nesterin assumed it was only a select few. She also wondered _how much_ Deshanna had told.

“Oh,” she said delicately, trying to work out the breadth of her sisters’ knowledge, “So...you know that-”

“That the _Dread Wolf_ is your _boyfriend_!?” said Mirwen. “Yes. Kept that a secret, didn’t you?”

Nesterin sighed, she pinched the bridge of her nose and felt weak and tired. “So, history has a way of simplifying things,” she said to them, looking around the room. “It has a habit of twisting the truth beyond all recognition. With time, details get ironed out, shades of grey seem to turn into black and white. Solas was-”

“Does he have sharp teeth?” asked Mirwen. “Like fangs? Does he actually turn into a wolf and eat babies and spoil milk and-”

“-I bet he was very handsome and charming,” said Bel, sympathetically. “You weren’t to know.”

“We don’t have to talk about it, it’s private,” said Laisa firmly. “But Deshanna said...he’s not really going to kill the world, is he? You can chase him off? Like the story with Fen’Harel and the dogs? Deshanna said you were going to.”

“Our stories are all wrong,” said Nesterin bitterly. Then she looked up and caught the eyes of her sisters, watched how worried and scared they looked. And she thought of how short a time she’d been away from them, and yet how little they knew of her now. She toyed with the sylvanwood ring on her finger and she said,“I mean, yes...I am going to try to chase him off.”

Gaelbana entered her head then. When she’d sat down on the ground and told her story she’d laughed and laughed bitterly when she thought of begging Solas to stay, because she’d been the one supposed to chase him off. Nesterin wanted to hold Solas, quite desperately. And she wanted not to think of Gaelbana’s bulging eyes and protruding black tongue.

_Afraid of the wrath of the monster from children’s stories. In that, at least, I believe she was wise._

“I think I’d like to get some rest,” said Nesterin to her sisters in a hollow voice. “I have to get well enough to travel very soon.”

“Because you’re going to Val Royeaux. We know. We’re coming too,” said Mirwen.

Nesterin blinked. “No,” she said flatly.

“Yes, we are.”

“No. Out of the question. This is not a negotiation.”

She took care to use her firmest tones. The kind reserved for sitting in judgement in her large chair in the Great Hall of Skyhold. It had made great men tremble, it had seen bridges built and murderers condemned to die. Her sisters, however, had known her since birth and were quite unphased by it.

“We are.”

“It’s fixed.”

“We decided it between us and told Leliana that we needed to come,” said Mirwen staunchly. “And you can’t say anything. We’re all going, and Elandrin...except Alifanon, who’s an idiot and wants to stay with Yawen. Yawen! Over Val Royeaux. She’s an idiot!”

“I think it might be because she loves her baby, Mirwen.”

“The baby’s alright….I suppose. But still!”

“Elandrin?” she realised, pulling a face. “The Keeper with no clan? Why’s he coming?”

“He was kind to us,” said Bel. “He said he would come to protect us, it’s his duty to watch over Dalish strays. And he said that since it was his job to keep stories for the Dalish, he couldn’t pass over the opportunity to witness this one. Plus, he saved Laisa…”

“ _I_ saved me,” said Laisa, pulling an ugly face. “Elandrin’s an ass.”

“A handsome one though,” said Bel dreamily.

“Back to you absolutely not coming to Val Royeaux-”

“We should let you get some sleep. We need to pack up anyway” teased Mirwen.

Nesterin growled in frustration. As they left, Nesterin grabbed Laisa and spoke to her, alone and in a low voice. 

“Laisa, do you think you could talk some sense into them? Val Royeaux is full of humans who hate us. It’s complicated and it’s horrible and I don’t want to see any of you hurt.”

Laisa turned around and folded her arms, letting out a bark of laughter.

“I’m not doing that. It was my idea to come.”

“Oh,  _Laisa_ ,” groaned Nesterin. She hoped desperately it wasn’t because of some desire to get out and have an ‘adventure’. 

“You went away and you didn’t come back for three years. We didn’t see you. You didn’t even write to us properly. You just sent _people_. It’s more than Pa ever did, but it’s not much is it?”

“I was trying. I tried my best to keep you happy and safe,” said Nesterin. “I’m _nothing_ like Pa _.”_

“Like we wouldn’t have killed to know _you_ were happy and safe? You nearly died alone at the Conclave, you nearly died alone at Haven and you nearly died all on your own in the woods.That’s not fair. That’s not what we do.  I’m not going to let my sister die on her own.”


	15. D’une part, d’autre part

As excited as her sisters had been to come with her, the novelty of it wore off much quicker than Nesterin suspected they had been anticipating. Since so much of the time was taken up with travelling, it was, Bel pointed out quite disappointedly, just the same as being Dalish, really. Only the mode of transportation had changed, from  aravels and their own feet to a large wooden wagon.

Nesterin did her best to brief her sisters. Again, she found herself having to condense years of mistakes, missteps and unexpected social triumphs into three days and without the added weight of the fate of the world being on their shoulders, her sisters got bored of it easily.

“So, there are lots and lots of titles for Orlesians. The Emperor is the highest, if you ever address him- not that you will- you must call him ‘Your Radiance’ or ‘Your Imperial Majesty’. Next are the Dukes and Duchesses, they have to be called ‘Your Grace’-”

“-I have a question.”

“What?”

“How long did Fen’Harel pretend _not_ to be Fen’Harel?”

“The whole time,” snapped Nesterin impatiently. “The whole time I knew him. Anyway, after the Duchesses come the Marquis and Marquesses. You can call them ‘Your Grace’ too-”

“Did the ancient elves have that too? Titles and funny ways to call people and what not? Probably not, it seems stupid and boring. But if you got _bonded_ to Fen’Harel would that make _you_ something too? Not a...god...but like a god. Or like Ghilan'nain? How does it work?”

 _They say that when the blood of the pillars ran red, they bathed themselves in glory, the Evanuris, the Forgotten and the Shenamahn alike,_ said one of the voices from the well.

 _They say it- but then again they lied to us too,_ Amaril interrupted.

She’d heard of the Evanuris, of course, and the forgotten ones, but Nesterin didn’t recognise the third name. She was about to ask when the actual world interrupted.

“If you had babies what would they be like? Would they live forever?”

“He’s trying to break the world! We’ll never get married. We’ll never have babies.” Nesterin snarled furiously. “It’s. Not. Important. What is important is that you pipe down and listen. The Great Game has killed people who played it for years, probably mastered it and not one of you has ever even _spoken_ to a human before. I’m _trying_  to keep you safe.”

“We’ve spoken to humans before. In Wycome. You don’t know,” mumbled Mirwen, sounding hurt.

“We’re allowed to be curious, surely?” offered Elandrin. “Afterall, if what you are saying is true-”

“-It _is_ true-”

“-Then you’re essentially everything the Dalish ever hoped for. A means to keep our ancient ways alive when they were lost for so long. You can’t possibly think to hoard all that knowledge for yourself. That’s too cruel.”

“Thank you for your input, Elandrin,” said Nesterin cooly. “I did try to share it, if you’ll remember. And I got tied to a post in a pile of halla shit and nearly executed for my troubles.”

She was still trying to work out how he had managed to talk his way into the carriage with her sisters. Bel was easy, she was too kind and trusting but even Mirwen seemed to like him. Only Laisa had enough sense to roll her eyes when he laid on the charm.

So, he was a better spy than she gave him credit for. She wouldn’t make that mistake again. 

“I, for example,”Elandrin went on. “Am wondering how many of the stories measure up in light of what Deshanna told me.”

Rather than sit through a lecture about the possible realities of Andruil’s great and terrible bow, crafted from the stars, Nesterin went back to Amaril to ask her about the Shenamahn.

 _They were just soldiers. The Most Brutal and Beloved Bastards of the Father of Many. Of course you wouldn’t have ever heard of them...the soldiers and the servants always get lost to history._ Amaril sighed audibly, something she’d never heard from the voices in the well. _I’m not like you...everyone calling you ‘Lady’ or ‘Your Worship’, even though you’re really quite stupid... No one remembered me when I was alive, why should anyone remember me now I’ve been dead for thousands of years?_

_Amaril, are you alright?_

_No. I hated when you nearly died and I hate that compassion spirit for rummaging around where he’s not wanted. Now I feel depressed._ Then Nesterin heard a laugh and when Amaril spoke again she seemed much happier, _Ha! I_ **_feel_ ** _depressed. You’re always depressed so I can feel that a lot, but this time I feel it in me and not in you._

_Oh. I’m sorry? Or... I’m happy for you?_

But Amaril didn’t speak to her after that, and it was fortunate because Elandrin had stopped his story, just as Val Royeax drew closer on the horizon.

Through a thick haze of grey cloud and grey rain, the Imperial Palace loomed like a mountain. The golden spires pierced through the fog like sharpened needle points and the hard, square, deliberate corners of the architecture looked as unnatural as could be, another mask dropped onto the surface of the world. Her sisters watched it approach, silently. They could see the Grand Cathedral now too, an ornate building of cold, hard, unforgiving stone and the White Spire, perched severely at the top of it’s Hill to watch over and observe Val Royeaux like a colossal Templar dressed in white armour.

Now, after days of trying to explain the gravity of the situation to them, the other elves in the carriage finally understood. In the shadow of the weight and might of human endeavour and human supremacy, they must have felt how she had done, seeing it for the first time all those years ago. Perhaps others saw the beauty in it, the fickle nuances and burning rivers that Leliana spoke so prettily about, but they were Dalish and they were mages and it only ever looked terrifying.

Beside the road ahead, a large tent had been constructed. It was an ornate, square, impractical thing with stripes in Orlesian colours. Nesterin had seen ones like it at a Tourney she’d had to make an appearance at about six months after Corypheus had been defeated.

Five or six people stood or sat waiting around the tent along with an assortment of very handsome black horses and an opulent gold and black carriage. As she got closer she was surprised at what the people wore- each of them hid behind the standard Orlesian masks, but none of them wore the bright colours she expected to see in Orlais, only various shades of inky blacks and sombre greys. Even Leliana, who she spotted flagging down the coachman had exchanged her usual purple cowl and reddish armour for something more sheathed in shadows.

“Are we here?” asked Mirwen, she’d fallen asleep as Elandrin spoke and wiped a little spit from the corner of her mouth.

“Quick detour,” Nesterin explained. She eyed the black coach and the lovely horses and imagined they were for her. Vivienne’s orders most likely. Naturally, she’d want her Herald to arrive in style.

After jumping out of the carriage and stopping to greet a few of the horses, she couldn’t resist the feel of a fine coat, Nesterin turned to Leliana, giving her a nod of her head and a small smile. 

“Thank you for helping my sisters,” she said. “I know they’re a bit of a handful.”

“It’s no trouble,” Leliana shrugged. “We have much to discuss later. Away from Orlais’ many ears and eyes. But for now, Divine Victoria wants to meet with you immediately. She mentioned there might be a small procession.”

“So she sent a very tasteful, very subtle carriage,” said Nesterin. That was Vivienne alright, never ever caught knowingly underdressed.

“Yes. And a change of clothes. I also wanted to introduce you to some people I have enlisted to help us during your stay. Though I think you know the first,” said Leliana with a gesture towards the carriage.

Looking around it, Nesterin beamed and found the Iron Bull, looking bored, swinging his weapon and practising his stances. She stepped quickly around the carriage so that she could face him .

“I take it you’re my hairstylist,” she smirked.

Iron Bull chuckled and shook his head, “Nah. Took this personal protection job. Some fancy Chantry High-up’s gotten her fancy ass marked by the Crows.”

“Oh no! That seems so dull.”

“It’s a cushy job if you can overlook all the church crap. And the pay’s good.   _Really_ good.”

“I don’t know if I can afford you, Bull.”

Nesterin joked, but actually, when she thought about it she really didn’t know. Before she left for the Conclave, Deshanna had given her a handful of coppers and that was the first time she’d ever carried money in her life.

Her Pa, she remembered, had known about money- about what it was like to need it and not have it, but her clan hadn’t as much. They traded their pottery for goods where they could and shared most of what they had with the clan. In the Inquisition, Josephine had managed the money and Nesterin had been fine with that. She’d left Skyhold with a fair amount of gold in a purse and had given it to Deshanna, that was all she knew of her personal wealth now.

“Yeth you can!” a voice piped behind her as if reading her mind.  “And fourteen more The Iron Bullth bethide, if you wanted.”

The voice, lisping, high and fluttering, belonged to a small, plump Orlesian woman. She was dressed exactly like a frilly Orlesian cake, with ribbons and flowers and a full skirt- except it would have been a rather macabre cake given that she, too, was dressed in black. Her mask, naturally, covered her face and made it difficult to judge if she was young or old. Her hands too were covered and about her neck she wore a thick concoction of heavy powders.

“We’ve been ditholving the Inquisiton in your absenth, My Lady,” the plump cake-lady continued. “ Over the yearth you accumulated many athets, from farmland and quarries to lyrium mines. As per your instructionth an incredible amount was donated to The Chantry-” -Nesterin couldn’t remember that, but she hadn’t exactly been at her most stable right after her arm had been taken, possibly she might have roared, _oh let the fucking chantry take it all, since that’s what they fucking want. Let everyone rip out their fucking piece of me-  “_ But it has made you a very very very wealthy woman.”

“This is Baroness Girons,” said Leliana. “She’s an excellent accountant and a close business associate of Josephine. The Baroness has also offered her house to you and your family.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I thank you for looking after the Inquisition finances and for your hospitality, Your Ladyship.”

“Oh my, you are thuch a lovely little thing,” giggled the Baroness, somewhat patronizingly- but that was far from new. “But pleath, call me Olympe. I’m altho here to handle your thchedule and make arrangementth. We have a dreth for you, from the Divine herself. Laurent will style your hair. We have girls to bathe and dreth you. But we must hurry. We are fashionably late for now, but thoon we will thimply be rude.”

“My sisters-” said Nesterin, she turned around, expecting them to be behind her so that she could introduce them. But they only sat in the carriage poking their heads out and gaping at the strangers, too nervous to actually come out and speak. “I think they’re tired from the journey. They might need something to eat.”

“Yeth, yeth, I will see to it that they can get some morthal to nibble on. But you, my pretty, mutht eat nothing. Not one crumb. Not with your dreth.”

“Some wine then?”

Olympe giggled again and gave an odd, delighted shudder that made her very ample bosoms tremble,“They thaid you had a fondness for Orlesian wines. I have a very fine white for you to try.”

The prospect of a fine white wine at least was a positive. Nesterin quickly ducked into the carriage to explain to her sisters that she was just going into the tent to get dressed if they wanted to get out and stretch their legs.“The Iron Bull is fun and kind and not at all scary,” she told them, pulling her head out before having second thoughts and poking her head in again. “Oh, and I’m getting you some food. Eat the fruit and the cheese and the biscuits, but the sweet stuff will make your teeth hurt. And if you want to try anything called pâté it will probably give you the shits. You have been warned.”

It was a shame that Josephine could not come, Nesterin fretted. She’d coped exceptionally well with the other wild Dalish girl who’d been thrown unexpectedly into Orlesian politics and it occurred to her that she’d never actually gone to Orlais without Josephine there, always to be relied upon to smooth out any of the wrinkles.  On the other hand, Nesterin reminded herself, Josephine had a life and her family business to look after, she couldn’t just expect her to come running.

She’d be fine. She wasn’t alone. She had managed to get a hold of a glass of nice white wine and Leliana was, as always, an exceptional help. She had the Iron Bull too. And Vivienne. Vivienne was trying to help her. Though she sometimes had a funny way of showing it. 

Like having Nesterin stripped down by serving girls and made to stand in a large bucket of water mixed with several sprigs of lavender. The elf attendants picked up their cloths and began to scrub at her incredibly roughly, peeling off layers of dirt and grime and skin interchangeably. 

At the gap in the tent, a face appeared. She saw Bel’s big eyes gazing at her, as her sister mumbled, “Can I come in?”

She didn’t wait for the affirmative, casually opening the tent. They’d washed and swum naked in rivers a hundred times before, Bel wasn’t phased by nudity in the least. But Nesterin knew she was phased by the strangers outside.

“Lady Herald! I’m tho thorry!” said Olympe from outside. She fumbled for the ties on the tent as she made a great deal of not looking.

“It’s alright, Olympe,” Nesterin called as Bel sat herself down heavily on the grass.

The servant girls went on scrubbing for a moment or two longer. They peeled off Nesterin’s bandages quickly to scrub underneath them too, revealing that magic had saved her surely as the wounds were healing faster than was usual. As the bandages were reapplied, Nesterin turned to her sister who looked troubled on the floor.

“What is it?” Nesterin asked.

Bel looked at the servant girls, obviously uncomfortable with talking in front of them. But she steeled herself and asked:

“What’s an Erald?”

“A what? Oh, Herald. That’s me. I’m the Herald of Andraste. You’ll hear that a lot in Val Royeaux.. It means messenger...or omen, depending on your interpretation.”

“That’s why they call you the shem’s false prophet,” nodded Bel. “Only...so, you said _our_ god’s were only people. People we remembered wrong…but what came before that? If the gods made themselves gods...who made them people?”

“Well, lots of historians and theologians and cultures see it differently. The Chantry, for example, says that the Maker created everything, but that he turned away from them after he saw they were unworthy,” said Nesterin, figuring it was a perfect moment for Andrasteism 101, given that they’d experience it firsthand soon enough. “Andraste is the wife of the Maker and she was this woman who freed slaves and begged the Maker to look kindly on creation. Before she... got burned alive by Tevinter.”

It wasn’t a pleasant story when people got the condensed version of it, Nesterin realised.

“And you believe in the Chantry?” asked Bel.

Nesterin looked nervously at the elf servants. She was sorely tempted to say, _The religion that murdered our people? Not one fucking bit,_ but instead chose the more diplomatic: “I believe in the _people_ in the Chantry. Some of them. My friends. Like Cassandra and Leliana and Cullen. They’re very good people...and _they_ believe in it.”

Nesterin took a gulp and finished her wine.  Bel was clearly not satisfied with her answer but Nesterin quickly saved herself by saying, “We should discuss this later, Bel.”

Soon, Nesterin was dried and dressed in her undergarments. She had not missed corsets one little bit, clutching her side as it was laced, slightly concerned that her stitches would break and that she would bleed all along the corset’s cotton interior. When that was done, however, she was presented with a box.

“A present from the Divine,” mumbled one of the girls in a heavy Orlesian accent.

After opening it, a little gasp escaped her throat.

In the box was a prosthetic arm. It was gorgeously decorated and incredibly delicate, coloured black with elaborate gold detailing. Imperial looking patterns travelled up it, along with chantry sunbursts and seeker’s eyes. But they were balanced out with a distinctly stereotypical elven softness, all flowering willow branches and scattered rose petals.

As the girls helped her get it on, strapped at the shoulder, Nesterin was excited. But her excitement began to wane as she felt the heavy weight of the prosthetic. There were no joints in it, so it could not be manipulated in any way but straight and stiff. It was porcelain too. The delicate fingers curled into a dainty position were immovable and probably immensely breakable.

Decorative, heavy and useless. Nesterin had never felt more like a broken doll- thing.

The dress came next. To befit remembrances of a dead prophet, it was a sombre shade of black. But that was where all restraint ended, as far as the garment was concerned. To hide her bandages, fine delicate black lacework travelled all the way up to her throat, hemmed with a thick gold collar. Her shoulders were cut out, and left bare, and floating sheer fabric covered the rest of her arms.The skirt of the dress clung to her hips and backside as tightly as if it had been painted on, fanning out at the bottom like a burst of black lilies in a cloud of froth and tulle.

The mask she was given matched the prosthetic, it was porcelain and covered the same half of her face. It had golden swirls around it like a poor recreation of her old Vallaslin and that made her feel slightly ill. Made her think of poor Gaelbana carving herself up for the god of secrets after Solas had taken her’s away.

Laurent styled her hair quickly and prettily, though he complained about the lack of time and that it was still wet. It was tucked neatly into an elegant bun, leaving a few strands twining down her neck whilst, she noticed uncomfortably, it had been gathered in such a way as to hide the tips of her long, sharp ears.  

Folding her hand over the bottom of her rib cage was a trick she’d picked up. It was considered a ladylike posture, making the back appear straighter and it meant she could massage her aching ribs when no one was watching.

 _Orlesian drama, fancy details and sparkly things,_ she murmured to herself, feeling like the antithesis of the girl in soft flowing white who’d danced while she was trying not to die.

“How do I look?” she asked, turning to Bel.

Her sister pulled a face.

“It looks uncomfortable.”

“It is,” Nesterin agreed. “But this is how we have to do things in Orlais. People wear masks and they hide, here. People will say one thing to your face and another thing entirely when your back is turned and the only thing that everybody trusts is that no one else is to be trusted.”

* * *

 “Damn. I can see where the Chantry is coming from,” said Bull as she left the tent. “That ass of yours deserves a sainthood.”

“Disturbingly, I think that might have been the point. But it’s probably best not to let anyone else hear you saying things like that.”

“I’m the bodyguard, I’m supposed to be watching your ass!” said Bull, but he saw that Nesterin had raised her eyebrows and apologized with a, “I know, I know, Boss. Just getting it all out before we gotta go do all that fancy Orlesian stuff.”

“I know what you mean.”

Drawing himself up, Iron Bull took a breath, and smiled at her slyly before he roared, “FUCK. ASS. SHIT. PISS!”

Olympe, who was helping Nesterin with her skirts leaped backwards with a little shriek, but The Iron Bull paid her no mind as he asked Nesterin, “You wanna try it, Boss?”

“Oh. I don’t think I should-”

“Come on. You’ll feel better.”

“Okay...but my throat did have an arrow stuck in it.”

“The next words that come out of your mouth had better be the foulest profanities ever uttered…”

“Cock,” said Nesterin, as loudly as she dared. Which wasn’t that loudly at all. “Err...Cock….Fucking, fucky fuck...Fenedhis lasa...Fen'Harel ma halam!!!” she shouted hoarsely, her voice straining at the end part.

“Good?” asked Iron Bull.

“Good,” Nesterin agreed, her voice hurt and it was more tiring to shout than it should have been but she did feel a small sense of release somewhere, “Thank you.”

“That’s okay” Iron Bull nodded, but then he looked sideways at her slightly, “…. Boss?”

“Yes, Bull?” asked Nesterin, gathering up her skirts so that she could best shove them into the carriage.

“You- ah- alright? In yourself?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You seem different…I mean, you’ve always been wound tighter than a bowstring-”

“Thank you,” said Nesterin drily.

“Figured you desperately needed some loosening up, but now…Solas is a prick, I think is what I mean to say.  Something about him always seemed off, I mean he spoke better than anyone who’d apparently spent most of their life travelling alone, he didn’t even smell like a hedge mage and don’t get me started on his magic. But I never guessed.”

“It’s alright,” she said softly.

“All I’m sayin’ is…I let you down on that one, Boss.”

“You absolutely did not-”

“-You need me to do my part making amends and I’ll do it. When the call comes, Old Iron Bull will come charging.”

* * *

 Outside of the city were the few scattered homes of a hamlet sat right in the shadow of Val Royeax. As they passed through it, Nesterin noticed that there were people out on the widening street just before the sun gates. About a hundred or so people were stood on either side of the thoroughfare, some of them sitting on assorted stools or chairs that they had brought from their homes. They waved black scarves and banners as the carriage went by, probably impressed by the finery of the carriages and of the lovely black horses.

She wondered if they had come for her. It was unlikely, but nice to think that maybe some people still remembered. Pulling herself over to the window, Nesterin looked out and watched as a human child ran alongside the carriage. She waved a little tentatively out of the window and the little girl bounced and waved back as Nesterin heard the words,

“The Herald! She waved at me!”

There was a great rush and a sudden flash of light as a large pile of sticks on the thoroughfare was ignited. At first, it panicked Nesterin- her immediate thought was that it was a mage casting a ball of fire at the carriage to burn them alive. But then the bonfires erupted and began to glow quite prettily.

“That was kind of them,” murmured Nesterin.

Elves didn’t often get parades, so it was often nice- so long as she reminded herself not to be terrified of them. And it was far more than her own people had done for her.

And then they reached the Sun Gates and a numb feeling of horror began to slip over her. Slowly, as if she were still losing blood from her throat.

The first time she stepped into Val Royeaux had been pretty awful too. She could remember the howling silence of the thoroughfare and the people who turned to whisper among themselves. A woman, she recalled, had even run screaming from her and she’d been certain that an ambush of Orlesian soldiers was waiting to haul her into a jail by the armpits.

And yet, this was worse. Much worse.

As the Sun Gates slowly opened, thousands and thousands of people stood on the other side to greet her. People on the thoroughfare, people on the balconies, people craning their heads towards her from the windows of rooms high up in the dazzling white buildings. People everywhere that she looked.


	16. Un coeur de marbre

****The rich citizens wore full funeral garb, large skirts and hats in shades of obsidian, raven and sloe. Poor men fastened their good clothes with black armbands and the poor women wore black fabric as veils and headscarves. All together, they looked so sombre under the vast black canopies draped around the Summer Bazaar, but the atmosphere was one of jubilance, of cheering and waving. It was half funeral procession, half parade she thought, feeling slightly sick. Exactly the mood before a large public execution.

Another bonfire roared to life in front of her. What a strange, savage thing to do, thought Nesterin. To mark the death of their beloved prophet with bonfires and festivals.  Nesterin pulled her head back, out of sight of the crowd and looked, wide-eyed, from Bull to Leliana.

“The Chantry holds you up as Herald. And now the people love you,” said Leliana. She said it in a faraway voice not really aimed at Nesterin, one that indicated that she was thinking very carefully. “You ought to wave and smile.”

Feeling ridiculous, Nesterin did so. The trail of people lined the larger streets and she could see them filling the narrower back alleys as they passed. A black banner had been hung from the high walls of the Val Royeaux alienage. Under Briala’s covert influence, Nesterin had hoped to see the alienage dissolved, so it was always disappointing to see that it remained, a towering testament to the divide so many wished to keep between the elves and humans. Laws could change but people’s minds took far longer. The People stood along the walls, on top of each other and carts and barrels, some of them clinging to the wall, even, to try and get a better look at her.

Who were they here for? What kind of person did they expect to see looking out at them from the windows of the carriage? Whoever she was, venerated by the Chantry, devoted to Andraste, dressed so prettily with a beatific smile and a modest incline of her head- it wasn’t Nesterin.

Compared to the typical colours of Val Royeax, the Grand Cathedral was hard and grey- much better suited to the funeral feel of the festival. There were no plants in the courtyard of the Cathedral, no grass, no flowers or trees. When humans built their monuments they trampled all over nature, determined to stamp their mastery onto it- as they did with all things. As her corset seemed to tighten and the string ties of her mask cut into her ears, Nesterin felt similarly stamped upon.

From their arched high towers, the Chantry bells vibrated in the air and through her skin like ripples through the veil. Solemn and sonorous, she watched them swing, sending pigeons careening through the air. The carriage stopped outside the Grand Cathedral. She saw Vivienne, dressed in her Divine Habit along with a large retinue of Chantry sisters and high priestesses.

“This is too much,” whispered Nesterin, a little dazed as she was helped out of the carriage. The bandages in her arrow wound felt disturbed by the tightness of the dress and the corset. She suspected she might already be bleeding a little under her dress. “This is too much.”

* * *

 “Isn’t it extraordinary? Did you ever dream that you’d live to see an elf receive such a welcome through the Sun Gates? Let alone dream you’d be that elf?” asked Vivienne, smiling warmly.

After some waving and introductions to Chantry high ups, Vivienne had asked to speak to her privately. Deep in the cloisters of the Cathedral, Nesterin was taken to a presbytery-like room with high, echoing, ceilings and walls of elegantly formed stone masonry. While Iron Bull stationed himself outside of the door to guard her, Nesterin took note of the elegant rug draped over the cold stone floor that did little to keep in the warmth and of the pretty pastel Orlesian furniture so out of place amongst the severe Chantry lines and primary colours of the stained glass windows. It seemed to indicated that Vivienne had brought in furnishings and moved things around in an attempt to make her own mark on the ancient and imposing walls. It was almost pitifully superficial.

“I thought you’d like a little treat, darling,” Vivienne added.

She was not an unkind person, after three years Nesterin was very confident that she could say that about Vivienne. In her own manner, she’d always been much kinder than she’d needed to be to Nesterin. Her advice was always sound, she cut the kind of formidable, fearless figure that any budding leader should aspire to and she treated Nesterin, an elf, with no less respect than she did anyone else. Similarly, when Vivienne asked for favours they were usually mutually beneficial.

However, the trouble was that Vivienne always thought about ‘mutually beneficial’  in terms of what _she_ would like. They had a few things in common; Rivani blood, a disposition best suited to the Knight Enchanter discipline and a steely, hard-formed kind of independence, but they also had an ocean of differences. Yes, Vivienne would have adored the pomp and circumstance of a new dress and a parade through the streets. She could never conceive of the fact that Nesterin would loathe it.

It was like spa day all over again, thought Nesterin. But she thought it best not to bring that up.

“Thank you,” Nesterin went for instead, concentrating on all the things to be grateful for. “I...truly don’t understand how you managed to pull it off. I’ve never...never, not even when the Inquisition was at its height seen so many people come together for one reason. The people must love you.”

“The people love _you_ ,” Vivienne corrected. If Nesterin wasn’t mistaken she thought she saw a flash of bitterness curling in the corner of Vivienne’s full mouth. But it was carefully ironed out and deliberately evened into Vivienne’s usually steely, smooth expression.  “I merely pointed them in the right direction.”

“I don’t know how things could have changed so much since the last time I was here.”

“That’s simple,” said Vivienne. Nesterin took it upon herself to fill her glass with wine as Vivienne spoke, an expensive rosy coloured liquor that smelled like fresh flower petals and tasted wonderful. “Without the Inquisition, you stand alone. It’s much easier for the masses to idolise a person than an organization. Organizations are just machines, filled with many disparate cogs and different perspectives. People are romantic and exciting and beautiful.”

Nesterin thought about Amaril’s bitter proclamation that nobody remembered the soldiers and servants. For good or for ill- and only if the world could be saved- Nesterin knew that she would have found a place in a history book or two. But now Nesterin no longer served the Inquisition, she would be written about alone. Once, she might have been simply a separate cog but at least she’d been part of something, with friends and a clear, shared goal. Now, she alone carried the weight of her mistakes.

“Vanishing into the woods for months was a genius move, darling. Such an enigmatic figure, they all say. Slowly, you are morphing into mythology.”

“Speaking of men morphed into myth-”

“-Now,” Vivienne interrupted, “ I hope you feel well rested after your little break amongst the Dalish (aside from the nasty little incident with the arrows, of course) because we have a lot of work to do.”

“Yes,” Nesterin conceded. “I need to go to the University of Orlais. They have the best minds in the world there. And to the white spire, they say the veil is very thin there. I think I’d like to experience that fully.”

“There’s a midnight ceremony where we will light the fire in the Cathedral square,” Vivienne said, speaking over her once more and waving her fan aggressively. “There’ll be a few balls, naturally. I've commissioned a portrait for you. Emperor Gaspard says he wants it hung in the Winter Palace- you have an admirer there. And I desperately want you to see my new circle, the building work is still going on- but we’ve moved a few mages and templars inside already.”

Hearing this packed itinerary, Nesterin shifted in her tight corset and frowned. It all sounded like a monumental waste of the time that they were steadily running out of. She’d not come to Orlais to attend parties.

“What’s the matter, dear? These are the days when we must decide how you are to live and what is to be your legacy. Together, you and I could shape this world for the better”

“Vivienne, I can’t,” Nesterin said, anguished. “My life...my legacy...they aren’t really my concern right now. Especially not if Solas destroys everything.”

Pressing her lips together, all trace of kindness or warmth suddenly vanished. Now Nesterin truly saw the Iron Lady in full force,“Don’t talk about that man,” Vivienne said coolly. “You’ll only upset yourself.”

Nesterin was just about to stress that they _had_ to talk about it, whether it upset her or not when Vivienne added, in a falsely bright sounding voice:

“I can find you someone so much better. Yes, I ought to play matchmaker. It’s been a while, but I have created some very very fortuitous marriage alliances in my time.”

“Vivienne, why are you talking in circles around me? You were there when I came back. You saw what happened to my arm. And I _know_ you must have been smart enough to sense that something was wrong before that. Fen’Harel _is_ planning to destroy our world. As we plan stupid parties and even stupider chantry sing songs and talk and talk about _bullshit_ ”

Vivienne laughed a lovely musical laugh, placing a delicate hand in front of her face. And then she stopped. And Nesterin felt very cold.

“You’re talking about an ancient elven God in front of the head of the chantry. And it’s _Divine Victoria_ to you, dear,” said Vivienne icily. She crossed her legs and rearranged her habit, casually picking a stray thread from the sleeve in order to make her next words that more aloof and blase. “ You realise, to acknowledge what you are saying, I would be rejecting hundreds of years of religious dogma and scholarship.”

“Well, I’m sorry but that's-”

“- I would also have to acknowledge that you are not- as you have claimed to be in front of a thousand people- the Herald of Andraste. Do you know the punishment for heretics, my dear? Look outside at the bonfires. You may find a very good clue”

* * *

 Outside of the door, she found Iron Bull and Leliana waiting for her. At the sound of Vivienne’s pleasant, mocking, terrifying call of _goodbye darling,_ she started off quickly down the halls. The Cathedral cloisters were a labyrinth of corridors dimly lit by flames, but she needed to get out immediately. Out of the fucking Cathedral and out of her fucking dress, out of the city if she needed to.

It was that same trapped feeling she’d felt in Haven, fending off hostile stares and hearing whispers that it was she who’d destroyed the conclave and always that pounding in the back of her head of _Rat in a cage. Rat in a cage_.

“Boss! Boss!” Bull called after her, but even his massive form struggled to keep up with her. It wasn’t fast enough though, the skirts made her steps more like a struggle and the fucking porcelain arm made her feel weighed down on one side. She fiddled frantically with the shoulder straps and pulled it off, holding it in her one hand.

“How can the chantry be our most powerful ally, Leliana?” she asked, rounding on her two companions, struggling for breath in her tight corset and viciously waving the porcelain arm she now held in her hand at them. “Vivienne just threatened to have me _burned at the stake_.”

She stared at them, expecting gasps and groans and shudders. But she received no reaction whatsoever.

“You don’t seem surprised? Why do neither of you seem surprised?” Nesterin gritted her teeth together and snarled. “Why did she even make me do this Herald thing? She _knows_ I was never the Herald. I know I was never the Herald. It’s your religion she’s pissing on, Leliana. Shouldn’t you be angry about all this?”

“It was a sensible choice, politically,” said Leliana in a measured tone. “Vivienne watched you place the hand of an elf inside of a puppet emperor, she knows- if pushed to it- you can play The Game as well as anyone. And I believe she wanted to make sure people remembered whose side you are on. And have always been on.”

Nesterin laughed bitterly, “Vivienne’s writing my biography now? Brilliant. I thought Varric was bad enough.”

“Easy,” Bull tried, holding his hands up placatingly. “Watch where you swing that arm!”

“And that certainly doesn’t explain why she threatened to _burn_ me. Fuck...was it her? Did she send the Crow to get me?”

Leliana blinked and then she laughed. Not a cruel laugh, just a laugh as if Nesterin had said something very funny.

“Well who did, then?”

“You saw the crowd. The bigger the figure, the larger the target. The net we must cast to find your assassin is going to be a very wide one” said Leliana.

“But it was like she didn’t believe me! She wouldn’t even let me _talk_. How am I supposed to do this? How am I supposed to change his mind when no one...no one is on my side!”

Panting, she stared at Leliana who merely sighed and stepped forwards. Nesterin flinched backwards, but delicately, Leliana placed one of her hands on Nesterin’s shoulder whilst the other plucked the porcelain prosthetic out of her hand.

“Will you come with me?” Leliana asked softly, “There’s something I think I need to show you.”

* * *

 Leliana took her to a chapel on the outskirts of the city. Here, the streets were much thinner, littered with beggars and old crates. Mud and grime had been churned up by the rain whilst effluvium was poured out of windows to run freely into the gutters. In order to appear less incongruous with their surroundings, they switched out the ornate carriage for one far simpler and a cloak was fetched to sit around Nesterin’s shoulders.

Compared to the imposing stone of the Grand Cathedral, this chapel was small and dilapidated. It’s single, thin spire had once been white but had become a murky brown from decades of soot. The glasswork in the windows was dull and simple and grimy. Leliana asked Iron Bull to wait outside and she and Nesterin went forwards.

Inside, the benches had been either been removed or upturned, and birds made their nests in the ceiling beams. There was a taste of dust and decay in the air and pigeon shit on the floor.

“An attempt by the Chantry to reach the lower parts of the city,” said Leliana. “The prostitutes and thieves here were not as receptive to the Maker as we would have hoped. But it makes for a good place to hide things and to talk away from prying ears and eyes.”

Unlike the rest of the church, however, the gardens were quite lovely. Contained within high stone walls, a vast array of roses, fuchsias and geraniums bulged and bloomed. A small pathway led from the chapel doors and twisted around the garden towards a neat little lily pond, and a large collection of stone statues led the way. It was easy to forget that the garden resided in one of the darkest, dankest recesses of the city. How pleasant, Nesterin thought, to walk around this garden when the bustle of the crowds became too much.

“The Divine is terrified of Solas,” said Leliana gravely and Nesterin wondered if she always left her most serious conversations for pleasant strolls in chapel gardens. “His very existence is a threat to her position. And his plan is too terrible to comprehend. You understand?”

“Better than anyone,” Nesterin nodded, walking alongside Leliana. The gardens began to have their desired effect. Finally, she felt a little like she could breathe.

"I have not told her about your people changing. I thought...given Divine Victoria's view on mages..."

"Yes, thank you."

"But...I am wondering if I should."

"Not yet, please. I need a little more time," Nesterin begged.

Leliana sighed. 

“She has been helping. Ever since you returned to us from the Eluvians she has been helping. More than many in her position would dare to. And, well, you see the results…” Leliana waved to the garden.

Nesterin blinked. She wondered what she was supposed to be looking at. A dilapidated church and a pretty garden? What did that have to do with Solas?

And then she noticed the statues.

Many Orlesian gardens had statues, as did many of the churchyards. But they were usually carved into calm, seraphic poses. Perhaps a lady in a loose gown might extend her arms to the heavens, perhaps a strong man might flex his muscles in a celebration of the ideal human physique. They didn’t usually look like _this_.

Women and men in armour with their swords and bows were drawn, ready to strike. Or others with their heads down and their legs bent as if  they were trying desperately to run but had found themselves fixed into place. Or many, many more on their knees, their arms up as they cowered in fear. And all of them, each and every one, caught with an expression of twisted pain.

She’d seen it before. In the Crossroads.

“This is not meant to cause you pain,” said Leliana. Her face seemed impenetrable and, not for the first time, Nesterin wished that she’d been able to stop the other woman from killing Sister Natalie in the Valance Cloister. She should have pulled her away with as much force as she could muster. She should have stepped in front of the blade if she needed to. Something then, she’d sensed it, had been changed irrevocably inside of Leliana. And Nesterin often worried that she’d been the cause.  

“But I’m doing it because I don’t believe it should be hidden from you,” Leliana continued. “And, well, because I wish to know your opinion.”

She took the path and she walked among the statues, each one a marker on a road of death. She studied their faces. Each and every one. Their noses, their mouths and their fingers, spread out, pleading, desperate, dead.

“Oh. _No. No_ ,” whispered Nesterin.

“Our spies. Our soldiers. These are the ones who were recovered-  many more have not been found,” said Leliana quietly.

 _Didn’t I tell you he was two-faced? He is cruel. He is cold. He tricked you and now he sits, hugging himself and laughing madly with glee,_ she heard Amaril say in the back of her head.

Most were humans, she noted. But they made up only a slim majority. There were many elves too, mostly bundled up in shadowy cowls. She saw a young elf woman who’d pulled her head away, her thick plait swinging as she’d done so. That plait was now caught in the air, right at the moment of her death. She’d been real and then she’d been made un-real. Just a stone approximation of something. A cold, solid shadow.

“We believe that the window of time for changing Solas’ mind may be closed. If it was ever open to begin with.”

“ _No_ ,” Nesterin whispered. More to convince herself. “ He saved me. Once from the mark. And again in the woods.”

“And we have had to consider why. For love? Because we are no more a threat to him than mayflies? Because he has plans for you yet? Or perhaps because you are a spy?”

“I’m not a spy, Leliana,” Nesterin murmured heavily. She couldn’t draw her eyes away from the girl with the plait. It could have been Bel, or Laisa, or Mirwen or Alifanon.

“Probably not,” Leliana agreed. Nesterin wasn’t entirely sure if it was sincere. “But I do have concerns that you are too close to him. Solas lied to you about so many things. It is possible, is it not, that love may have blinded you?”

“So you wanted me to look my love in the eye.”

And she did look. She made herself. She looked into the cold, empty, fearful eye of the stone girl in front of her.

 _They’ve always been the same,_ Amaril muttered bitterly. _Always thinking they were better and that we were less than. I used to thank my lucky stars I hadn’t been for Andruil or Elgar’nan. I would have been a whore or a sacrifice. Even Mythal made us bend the knee. Tend her temple day and night. Sing her songs of praise. Like she had any right to ask..._

“You have a home in Kirkwall. You have a little wealth and now you have your family about you. If you don’t want to, you do not have to be in this fight.”

If only they’d asked her that at Haven. She might have gladly taken the opportunity. She might have run for the hills, home to her clan and never looked back.

Again her promise felt like a chain around her neck, like a binding ritual made potent by her words and her tears and her blood. Despite the flowers in the garden, the road ahead seemed so stark that she could hardly bear it. Lover or Monster. Fight or Flee. Kill or Save. Flesh or Stone. She missed the colours and the shades in things.

_“We shouldn’t-”_

_From his lips, it was more of a question than an answer. His fingers had already betrayed him, twining through her hair, raking across her face. His breath came out fevered and she caught it in her mouth with savage, desperate kisses._

_“Tonight,” she told him firmly. Her hands clutched at his shirts, aching to feel him and to fall and to drown, “Just give me tonight. And then...”_

_For all his talk of duty and distractions, she knew there might not be another chance. The minutes and moments seemed to fall away from her like rain. All of the armour had been wrought, all of the swords sat ready in their sheaths. Her final battle loomed and in some deep part of her bones, she felt the cold approach of death. Yet he was so warm underneath her. Warmer still when he held her and enveloped her, her clumsy hands at his shirts, his hands around her buttons, releasing her from the heavy weight of clothes and roles, duty and destiny._

_“Solas,” she breathed as he slipped inside of her. She made to roll her hips against him, like the wave of a tide that could bury the sand. But he caught her. Kept her. Frozen and aching in the place between the fear of loss and the promise of escape._

_Slowly, the way that ice always thaws,  he ran his hand across her cheeks, her nose, her lips, her throat. He touched her breasts, swiped his thumbs across her nipples. When she sighed and tried to thrust once more, he stopped her. He fixed his eyes, grey and burning and open, right upon hers._

_And he said:_

_“You are my heart. Always.”_

“Ma ghilana vhenan” whispered Nesterin to the cold eyes of the statue.

 _And the voice in your head, I’ll guide you too,_ Amaril asserted. _I’m just an old dead servant but I will help if I can._

Nesterin thanked her silently.

“You need me,” said Nesterin looking back to Leliana with a wan smile and a sad shaking of her head. “There’s no choice for me, it’s all already been decided. I drank from the Well of Sorrows. I know the language of Mythal’s servants. I know their hopes and their fears. I know that Mythal’s foci may yet exist and I know I can find it. I also know that the first of my people are not defeated by swords and arrows.”

Waving her arms around the statues, she continued, “You mean for this to change my mind?” Nesterin laughed bitterly.

For a moment she reminded herself, rather worryingly, of poor, mad Gaelbana:

_The Dread Wolf shoots a slow arrow but he shoots it straight and true. And it always finds you in the end._

Standing in the garden, amongst the dead, she couldn't claim to know anything of the Dread Wolf.  She couldn't claim for sure that she knew the Solas who loved her either. Yet there were a few things that she did know to be true.

The garden told her that they _couldn't_ face him in battle. That her promise in the Eluvian meant more than she'd known when she'd made it. If there was no hope for Solas then there wasn't any hope at all. 


	17. Chardon et Herbe

****But what, for all of her grand words and great promises, did Nesterin know of _hope_?

For her, it was never a Chantry Song and hands clasped in prayer. Never a tear from a long-dead woman and a cry that He answered, to tell her she was not alone:

_Heart that is broken, beats still unceasing,_

_An ocean of sorrow does nobody drown_ _._

Once, it had felt like a hand. Placed upon the small of her back to steady her, to keep it straight and unbroken. With one eye ever looking backwards, the gentle hand had pushed her on. Because what else was there? There were no voices in the mountains to answer her cries.

The hand had been soft. And featherlight. Sometimes she hardly noticed it was there. But she’d felt the loss when it left.

 

* * *

 

Unfortunately, this was not her first black-out. They were not frequent (yes, she drank quite often, but always just enough to get by and never _that_ excessively) but they were still easily recognizable now.

She knew them from the taste of bile in her throat in the morning. From the burning want of water and the pressure in her head. Her memory, too, became an unfinished painting- all crudely formed sketches and none of the colour of the finished pieces; _telling Bull that she needed a drink_ and _demanding wine from poor accommodating Olympe_ , then _whiskey_ and _wrestling to pull herself out of her dress_ and then... _being put to bed and finding yet more to drink._ But that wasn’t enough to piece together the meaning behind waking on the floor of a room in Olympe’s house, and the smashed porcelain arm and the dampness in her undergarments.

 _When I was cloistered inside the temple walls, I often used to wonder what it might feel like to be famous and important,_ said Amaril, snidely. _Oh, the glamour of it all. It stinks very strongly of piss._

Nesterin groaned.

 _Pick yourself up. Wash yourself. Keep moving,_ said Amaril. And she did. For what else was there?

A heart that is broken beats still, unceasing.

The Baroness lived in a lovely townhouse in a part of the city that was clean and pretty and where flowers grew in the windowboxes. To accommodate the many other townhouses around it, it was very tall- rather than wide- and it was painted a soft shade of lilac. The inside was very sweet, very neat and very feminine, filled with many high-ceilinged little rooms and alcoves and cubby holes. If the Baroness was married, there seemed to be no trace of the man, either in the furnishings or in person. Nesterin was sure the Baroness had mentioned some Great Uncle, an invalid under her care, but he too had not made an appearance.

Dressed in neat black skirts she’d found in a bureau, Nesterin followed the narrow corridors decorated with peach wallpaper, fans inside of picture frames and watercolours of kittens in baskets. Soon she was able to locate the sound of voices and the metallic clang of knives scraping against plates:

“So, I’m trying to get on top of it. That’s all I want. Didn’t manage it the first time we got a dragon and I was damned if I was gonna let the opportunity pass me by.”

“ _You_ _didn’t_ ”

“Got this close. But then The Boss- your sister- she gives it a good swiping with her sword. And it goes rearing up, and the next thing I know I’m flying alright. Not on the back of a dragon though. Real shame.”

In the dining room, the shutters had been opened, swathing the room in a soft-hued yellow glow. Light net curtains fluttered romantically, and there was fancy china on the table. Against the pretty pastel refinery, those assembled around the dining table looked more than a little ridiculous.

There was The Iron Bull, bulging out of a chair at the head of the table, his massive hands around his knife and fork making them look like cutlery from a doll’s house. Next to him, hanging on his every word, with her mouth agape was Mirwen. She looked as if she was having the best time of her life, scooping up her scrambled eggs with a spoon, one of her knees pulled up to her chest on the chair.

There was Bel, consumed in the business of pulling a sausage apart with her fingers, scooping out the insides and putting the meat into her mouth. Elandin and Laisa sat next to each other, both also neglecting knives and forks in favour of more familiar spoons. Elandrin’s coat looked dirtier and more threadbare than it had appeared in the woods. He seemed aware of it, it seemed to make him uncomfortable. Laisa looked put out that she’d been stuck talking to Elandrin, her eyebrows crinkled into an annoyed frown as he talked to her.

“If you count this little part of Clan Lavellan, I think I’ve stayed with twenty-one different clans in total,” he was saying. “I’ve heard so many different stories now. But I must say, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to being in one of them.”

And there was the Baroness too. Who also, in her own way, looked not quite as though she belonged to the room in her own house:

“You’re awake! Thorry we broke our fatht before you. But we felt you ought to be let to sleep in a little”

If it wasn’t for the lisp and her plump frame, Nesterin might not have known it was Olympe at all. She wore no mask this morning and she was much older than Nesterin would have guessed. White powder sat in the fine lines of her wrinkles and made them more prominent, and her face was covered in several little pox scars.

“I’m sorry Olympe...I’m not sure quite what came over me,” Nesterin mumbled.

“Thath alright my dear,” said Olympe kindly. “You’re tho little, I should have known too much alcohol would have you feeling a little thilly.”

Nesterin slipped into her chair and clumsily poured herself a black coffee, adding a distracted, “Yes. That was probably it.”

Her hand was trembling. It made ripples in the coffee cup.

“ I imagine you are normally moderate with yourself,” Olympe continued to prattle. “As Andrathte would have been. Alorth, thometimes I worry we are too extravagant here in Orlaith.  We have thtrayed too far from the maker’th light- oh but you mutht eat thomething more than coffee, the thauthages are divine!”

Seeing Bel pull the ‘thauthages” apart like brains out of a skull did not particularly endear them to Nesterin, so she held up her hand and shook her head with a murmured, “No thank you, Olympe. I’m happy with my coffee.”

As she consoled herself with the bitter brown liquid, the relative peace of the dining room was disrupted by an unexpected intrusion.

It took the form of the doorknob turning and an old man appearing on the other side of it. He was thin and shrivelled and a papery shade of white underneath his thick dressing gown. His back was hunched and he leaned heavily upon a fine black walking cane. As he stared around the room, Nesterin could see that his eyes were blurry, like paint on wet paper. The pale green of his iris bled into the sclera, a cataract blotted the right pupil, and yet that gaze seemed exceptionally sharp. His thick grey moustache twitched furiously.

“Rabbits!” he shouted. “Rabbits got in! Thieves! Away with you! Away!”

Picking up the stick, he swung wildly, catching the nearest person to him, Laisa, in the jaw. Her sisters shrank back as Nesterin, Elandrin, Iron Bull and Olympe all leapt up.

“Uncle Henri! Uncle ith fine. Pleath calm yourthelf!” Olympe said, distraught.

“Rabbits in my house! Fleas in my house! Nasty creatures,” muttered the old man. A servant ran apologetically into the room and got a swipe for his troubles too. But short work was made of bundling the old man away, almost as quickly as he’d entered.

Panting and horrified, Olympe turned to them, nearly in tears, “I’m thorry. He’th not quite in hith right mind. Thometimth he geth in theeth rages, otherth he’th ath gentle ath a lamb.”

“Not to Rabbits though, I’ll bet,” said Laisa darkly, wiping the blood from her mouth.

* * *

After that, the mood became quite sour.

It did not improve once Olympe had informed them that Vivienne had arranged for Nesterin to visit a hospital on her first day in the city. Memories of Wycome had likely invaded the relatively safe space of Olympe’s home and now her sister’s began to wonder what other bile lurked behind the pretty Orlesian masks. They weren’t wrong to wonder, but Nesterin might have liked to have protected them from it for a little while longer. Nesterin told them that they didn’t have to come with her, but they could not be persuaded otherwise, frightened possibly of another run-in with the terrible old man and the stick.

Nesterin had resolved to make a success of the hospital visit. The more she thought about Leliana’s offer to leave Solas to her and Vivienne, the more she resented it.  They did not think she was a spy, but she had begun to suspect that Vivienne and Leliana doubted her competency as far as Solas was concerned. The words _lovesick_ and _deluded_ sprang to mind. 

It was called L'hôpital de Cendres et Chagrin and it was an officious looking red brick building with a high sloping roof and iron bars over the windows like a prison. Outside of the hospital was a flurry of activity- the kind only found in the city. Horses and carts ricketed up the cobbled streets, people with their heads down hurried about their business and paupers and Chantry nurses trailed inside of the great hospital doors. Her sisters, Elandrin, the Iron Bull and Olympe all accompanied her today. Funalis still being celebrated, Olympe wore a neat and sensible black dress, having arranged for her sisters also to have appropriate clothing.

Apparently a lot of money from the Inquisition had gone to the hospital, but at first glance it was hard to see. The carriage ride had already made her feel slightly queasy and the smell inside was not much better. Putrefaction and bile seemed barely masked by Orlaisian perfumes. Mopped frequently, in order to remove the stains of blood, the floors glistened as charred skin might. As they stood in the large reception room, at the bottom of a large staircase, Nesterin could already hear the screaming and crying from the wards.

A healthy sized party had come out to meet her. One man and two women, dressed in chantry garb came forward. Though they were affiliated with the church, they were also the senior doctors and they all looked slightly pinched and tired looking. They greeted her warmly all the same, though. Far warmer than the other members of the collected party, the two circle mages and the Templar.

The templar she understood. A man in his thirties with dark hair and very thick eyebrows, he maintained his stiff back, as he had been trained. She nodded to him, as she did to the two circle mages. The first she also understood and saw, by the sunburst on his forehead and with a heavy heart, that he was tranquil. Cassandra’s cure was not yet stable and, under Vivienne, the practice still occurred. A terrible wound from the short, frantic rebellion of mages that Vivienne had crushed after being declared Divine.

Perhaps that was why the other man, who was a redhaired human but almost as small and slight as an elf, looked upon her so cooly too.

They began to take her on a tour of the hospital. There were five large wards in total. A ward for maternity and young children, a ward for medical ailments and another for ailments destined for the surgical theatres. There was, too, a ward for disease which the chantry doctor delicately called ‘venereal’ and another for those patients who were contagious. Her influence, she was told, had been most keenly felt in the surgical wards- a swell of money having been needed to accommodate new discoveries that came out of the University daily.

Poor Iron Bull looked bored out of his enormous skull. Nesterin sensed he was beginning to regret taking the ‘cushy personal protection gig’. Cushy and comfortable began to get tiresome after a while, Nesterin knew that all too well. It was why she turned, halfway through the tour to the chantry doctors and said,

“I think I’d like to be put to work. My healing spells are quite proficient and I can brew fairly tolerable tonics.”

She’d asked that her sisters keep the fact that they were mages to themselves. Despite her influence, five apostate mages descending on the chantry was a little much to handle. With any luck, the Templar would not sense it, thrown off more by their Dalish tattoos and funny ways.

“As can I,” added Elandrin, who had apparently ignored her request.

“Only Circle Mages are permitted to use magic in the hospital,” said the slim redhaired human primly. “Orders of the Divine.” He sounded bitter about this fact and something in his eyes suggested he intended to test her.

“Oh, I think we can make an exception, Milou,” said one of the doctors.

“No, no, Milou is quite right.” Nesterin did not miss a beat, she only smiled. “ I’d be happy to change bandages and mop brows instead.”

She’d expected to be taken into the surgical ward. It wouldn’t have shaken her.  She’d seen dead and wounded and knew too well what death looked like. But they offered her the maternity and children’s ward, ignoring her objections. _Your presence as a woman will be a great comfort to the mothers and children,_ the doctors told her.

This was ironic, Nesterin thought. _As a woman_ she knew so much more of death than she did of life.

The maternity ward was crowded and had more life to it than most. Children that were well enough played amongst themselves, whilst others shared space, three to a bed. There were newborns and small infants in between expectant mothers with bulging bellies and a sour sort of milk smell lingered in the air.

At the end of the rows of beds, one girl lay alone. She looked very pale and very drawn, her dark hair sticking to her face with perspiration. She was very small too, for a human, her round face and delicate features suggesting that she couldn’t have been much more than fourteen years old. And that made the pregnant swell of her stomach look all the more uncomfortable.

“She’s leaking birthing fluid,” said Milou quietly, behind Nesterin’s ear. “The child will come, but it will surely be born dead.”

“What about her?”

“She has an infection. It’s unlikely she’ll live, My Lady,” said Milou, his intonation of My Lady little more than thinly veiled disgust. “Perhaps if we were allowed more freedom develop our magic in the circles, to study further…we might have been able to cure her.”

Nesterin felt a flush of shame about her face and the taste of an opportunity turned to ash. For a moment, she wanted to tell Milou, when Fiona and her Mages came to Skyhold- it had felt like things were going to change. And yet, as they always did, things had only gone back to the way they were.

“Where’s her family? Why’s she all alone?” demanded Nesterin instead. If she couldn’t reform Mage relations then surely it was in her power to ensure that one small girl did not die alone. She slotted her hand into the girl’s and crouched beside her. Her breath was shallow, her eyes were not open and she only drifted aimlessly in sleep.

Perhaps she’d been married off young. To a man who could have been older than her father. He’d turn her over wordlessly in the night for a grubby, violent poke that was over quickly and burned in the morning. Perhaps she’d thought she’d fallen in love, to a kind young man from the market who’d given her flowers and a baby and then gone.

It was a cruel life for a girl, thought Nesterin, squeezing the girl’s hand. She thought of her poor mother, wrapped up in sheets in the back of her aravel. It was a cruel life, to be loved, to be left and to have to sit all alone in the aftermath.

“You are too good Lady Herald,” said one of the Chantry Sisters. “This is Andraste’s mercy, yes?”

_No._

Nesterin felt a tug inside of her chest and she let go of the girl’s hand, feeling sick with herself, hating the Chantry sister for speaking. She made it feel hollow. Like it had all been part of the performance.

“Perhaps you would lead us in prayer?” the sister asked.

Nesterin flinched.

“I’m not thure,” Olympe interjected swiftly. “The Lady Herald hath an injured throat. It’s why she thpeaks tho thoftly. A verse of The Chant may be too much for her tho thoon.”

Olympe was smart to jump in, and quick about it too. Perhaps Josephine had informed her that whilst Nesterin tried her best, she had not been born in a city and some of the customs still evaded her. Perhaps it was Leliana who’d told her that sometimes overt displays of religion made her feel slightly uncomfortable- spinning it more so that she seemed modest and demure in her faith rather than the actual truth of the matter. Which was that Nesterin hated the songs and the prayers.

She thought she was off the hook, but Milou wasn’t going to let her get away with it.

“Come now! A prayer,” said the redhaired man, folding his arms. “Surely the Herald of Andraste can recite the Chant of Light so very-

“-I _have heard the sound. A song in the stillness….”_ she interrupted with a burst of song. If Milou meant for her to squirm then she would rob him of all opportunity. “ _The echo of your voice, calling creation to wake from its slumber.”_

The humans didn’t care to know but the Dalish had always had songs too. Better songs, Nesterin always thought, with drums and wooden flutes and always more life to them than gloomy chanting. Naturally, Deshanna had taught them to her- as Keeper, she had to preserve the stories in whatever form they came. She’d been made to sing them over and over, to remember the words in the same tune in much the same way she’d been made by Deshanna to speak common so prettily,

_“How can we know You?_

_In the turning of the seasons, in life and death,_

_In the empty space where our hearts_

_Hunger for a forgotten face?”_

As Nesterin sang, she thanked her lucky stars that the verse was applicable. It was the only one she’d been able to come up with on the spot. Give her an hour, she was certain she could recall more of the canticles, but they did not come as easily to her lips as they surely would a true believer.

Her voice was a great deal huskier with the arrow wound and she struggled to reach notes she would have found quite easily before the injury. She knew she sang well- not well enough, perhaps, to make it as a great bard, but certainly enough to please a clan around a campfire. Enough, too, to move a man who’d seemed really quite immovable before.

“Ir tela’ena glandival, vir amin tel’hanin. Ir tela las ir Fen halam, vir am’tela’elvahen? Is this a common Dalish song?” Solas had asked her. He’d caught her singing it to herself, passing time on the back of Falon over a long trek towards the Iron Coast.

“Oh yes. You can tell it’s Dalish because it’s about suffering. Or I could sing you a song about enduring, or dying, or mourning- but mainly suffering,” grinned Nesterin. “What else would we sing songs about?”

“It’s as if they take some sick kind of pleasure from remembering centuries of hardship,” said Solas, a curl of disgust in his face.

“I don’t think that’s quite fair-”

“You don’t think the Dalish are wallowing in sorrows of the past to excuse the mistakes of the present?”

“I think ‘ _The Dalish_ ’ as you think of them, don’t exist,” said Nesterin. She was learning that he’d talk over her if she let him, especially on matters of the Dalish, so she added quickly. “It's like you have said to me before: we’re disconnected. We wander. We only really have the stories and the songs to connect us- and everyone sings those differently anyway.”

She expected another quick and furious riposte to her argument. Truthfully, she quite enjoyed them. It might have been a bit pathetic, but she enjoyed it when he picked over her words and her arguments. The rest of them called her Herald and nothing she could say or do would persuade them otherwise. Sometimes she felt as if she were screaming and screaming in the middle of a crowded room and yet the people inside passed on by as if she were silent and invisible. Solas at least really listened to her and really saw her.

Even if it was so he could point out that everything she was saying was wrong. 

But he didn’t argue with her. He merely looked a little sad. And then he softly chuckled;

“You sing the songs of your people very beautifully, lethallin.”

“Then you may hear a little ‘Suledin’ if you like. It’s my favourite. It’s about suffering.”

_“You have walked beside me_

_Down the paths where a thousand arrows sought my flesh._

_You have stood with me when all others_

_Have forsaken me….”_

Through the course of her song, the ward had stilled and a few of the mothers and children had trailed over to come sit around her. Again, it felt horribly artificial, like a moment staged for a mummer’s show and she was merely playing the role of herself. She got a few polite claps and Nesterin looked over at her sisters.

Bel looked touched. Mirwen looked confused. The slamming of the door to the ward suggested that Laisa had just left.

* * *

 

Excusing herself, Nesterin found Laisa outside, crouched like a feral cat beside the wall of the hospital. Her youngest sister touched the cobbles of the paved streets as though she couldn’t quite believe it was real, as if her fingers ached for the feel of grass beneath them.

“You look like Pa when you lie,” said Lasia, she looked gloomily at ground.

“Laisa, Pa left when you were _one,_ ” sighed Nesterin. “You didn’t even know him.”

“I know he sold halla piss to shemlen,” Laisa hissed, standing up to face Nesterin. “That’s what you’re doing isn’t it? Only, all halla piss does is give people bad breath- your stuff actually kills people!”

“That’s not-”

“-Bel was asking that ridiculous lisping woman about Andrastaism last night.  After you’d passed out drunk. The _Chantry_ took the dales from our people. The _Chantry_ built a wall around the elves.”

“Val Royeaux is getting better, Laisa. I like to think I’ve helped-”

“-Give her a fucking medal!  There were no elves in that hospital. A thousand elves in Val Royeaux and not one of them was sick? Give me a break. Saying someone’s allowed in and actually letting them in are two different things.”

Laisa was right, Nesterin realised. There _were_ no elves in the hospital, not even working as porters or cleaners. She’d hardly noticed it, but now their quiet absence seemed as glaringly obvious as the stark white hospital walls. She thought of her clan, of her sister’s newfound abilities and wondered if that was not the cause.

 _Stop wasting time with the humans who know nothing,_ said Amaril. _We must go to the alienage and talk with The People. So many have left, but so many remain behind. To deal with the swirling aftermath all alone._

“ You’re different here,” Laisa went on with a sneer. “You _simper_. All morning you’ve been simpering. You look like a dog that’s been trained to stand on it’s hind legs and shoved into a fancy dress. It’s disgusting.”

“I _have_ to!” Nesterin snapped. “I am trying to _save_ the world.”

“What world? _This_?” Laisa laughed and turned around, heading off down the street.

The hot curl of anger in Nesterin’s chest made her leave Laisa to it. The ‘trained dog’ comment had wounded her pride alright. Laisa could wander the streets of Val Royeaux until she realised that Nesterin was the only thing keeping her safe here….

“I’ll go after her,” said Elandrin, appearing from behind her. 

“Do what you like,” said Nesterin coolly. “You might as well make yourself even slightly useful.”

Elandrin pulled back, stung but Nesterin didn’t care. At best he was a voyeur and a windbag, at worst he was a snake and a spy. Wordlessly, Elandrin sloped off after Laisa.

Nesterin turned around to see Bel, Mirwen, the Iron Bull and Olympe all watching her. She felt her hand trembling again, a terrible pain seizing her throat and a cold sweat erupting at her forehead.

“I want to go to the alienage hospital,” Nesterin told Bull and Olympe, irritably. “Make it happen. I don’t care how.”

 

* * *

 

The alienage hospital was a thousand times worse. It was much smaller, much shabbier and in keeping with the rest of the alienage dark and grimy surroundings. Unlike the red brick of L'hôpital de Cendres et Chagrin, the alienage hospital was not a permanent structure- merely a jumbled collection of boards and beams to make something like four walls and a roof.The windows were almost entirely black, not that they would have seen the sun if they were clean anyway.

Outside the building, the elves of val royeaux all had an ill- jaundiced look about them, so pale and stunted from lack of sunlight that they were, in and of themselves, a different species from the bronzed, willowy Dalish that Nesterin had always known. They looked at Nesterin with suspicion and Nesterin regretted asking to go to the hospital immediately. She’d thought to donate money, to show Laisa up and prove she was helping elves- but again she felt hollow for wanting to do so. It was simply another performance.

Hollow or not, she told herself firmly, helping was helping. While she was here, she could take the opportunity to talk and find out from the lips of the elves what was happening to them. Perhaps in a tavern, she thought, where alcohol always loosened lips.

“Come on, come on, out of my way,” said an irritable woman, pushing past Nesterin as she stood in the door of the hospital. Head down, the woman wore a cloak, but something about her voice was familiar.

“I need something for pain,” demanded the cloaked woman to the man on duty at the desk. “The strongest thing you have.”

“You’ll need to make an appointment and see a doctor.”

“I have a doctor...I just don’t have any medicine,” snapped the woman.

“Well then go to a pharmacist. We can’t help you here.”

“Well fuck you very much for your time then, flat-ear.”

Turning around, the cloaked elf woman looked up at her and exhaled sharply.  It took Nesterin all of a second to remember her face and the last time she’d seen it. It had been around the campfire on the road to Denerim. There had been blood pouring out of her nose and into her mouth as she had laughed and laughed at Nesterin. Laughed and laughed and said:

_“Ma banal las halamshir var vhen.”_

Revekah the camp follower from Skyhold did not look much better now. In fact she looked quite a good deal worse. Her face was pale and she had lost a lot of weight. Her clothes were little more than rags and her lovely, firey, hair had all been shorn off into a spiky, severe cut. Nesterin went to speak to her but almost immediately she took off, barging past a woman with a child in her arms and through the hospital doors. Without a moment’s thought, Nesterin went tearing off after her.

No doubt she would get a ticking off for it later, for taking off in the middle of the Val Royeaux alienage when there was an order out to kill her given to the most fearful assassins in Thedas. But Nesterin didn’t care about that at all. As Revekah travelled hastily through the foreign twisting streets, Nesterin toyed with using her fade steps, but knew it would be dangerous to do so openly.

It meant that she was slow, still recovering from the arrow wounds, and trapped inside fine Orlesian garments. Revekah was far faster, running like a halla from a wolf or a bear as if it were for her own survival. She pushed past people and jumped over muck in the street, leaving Nesterin to follow after her clumsily.

But Revekah made her mistake when she turned down a dark, deserted alley. Nesterin stepped through the fade and became a blur, catching up to Revekah and leaving her cornered and trapped.

Grabbing her arm, Nesterin held onto the other woman’s wrist tightly. As she did so, Revekah’s ragged cloak fell back over her hand to reveal a mess of bone and burns and blood. Her hand- or at least what was left of it- Nesterin saw, was bloodied and broken and twisted. Almost as badly as Nesterin’s had been made by the mark she’d carried for so long.

“What happened to you, Revekah?” Nesterin demanded, panting.

The other woman only laughed. Her same, maniacal, cruel laugh.

“Halam'shivanas,” said Revekah.

 _‘The sweet sacrifice of duty’. And how well it is said indeed,_ a voice from the well told her.

Then, before Nesterin had time to consider what it meant, Revekah lunged forwards towards Nesterin. With strange precision, she found the place of Nesterin’s arrow wound and pressed down on it hard.

Pain exploded in her side and Nesterin let out a scream of agony. Bile rose in her throat and tears stung her eyes as she lost her footing and fell to the ground.


	18. Tout Bien Considéré

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Squint and you may find some dubious consent in this chapter.
> 
> Also Orlesian and Vint humans are just plain terrible to elves so there are some uncomfortable sexual situations here too.

 

_I’ve seen this before. In the Temple. Their warped, unworthy hands made them more angry, more desperate._

As she spoke, Amaril sounded different somehow. Her usually low voice became quick and high and panicked. Nesterin swore she heard the gulping of breath, the trembling of vocal chords and the strangled strain of someone trying not to weep.

_Who’s hands, Amaril?_

_The sweet sacrifice of duty. I’ve heard that before too. Words wrought by people who thought themselves high and then placed into our low mouths...._

Amaril gasped so violently that Nesterin felt it too, coming out of her mouth and into the cold alienage air.

And then she fell silent.

After that, Nesterin tried desperately to reach Amaril. When The Iron Bull caught up to her, when she was admonished, when the bandages on her hips had to be changed, Amaril stayed silent. To the outside world, Nesterin feigned that her wound had left her dizzy and lethargic so that she didn’t have to engage in conversation and went on searching for the voices in her head.

_Amaril? What do you mean by the sweet sacrifice of duty?_

She only got the others. They tried their best to help her- in their usual not helpful way. They gave her several words for sacrifice, several memories of sweetness and several stories of duty. But compared to Amaril they were little more than echoes of a faded past.

Nesterin felt oddly lonely without her.

* * *

 But this was Orlais and it was hard to feel lonely for long when you found yourself trapped inside of The Grand Game. It was like a complicated dance on a bare stage placed high above a crowd. You danced and you twirled and you played your pretty piece and always, always there was someone watching.

By some miracle, Nesterin had been in Orlais for two days without attending a party but that was soon to right itself. Yet another grand and ornate Funalis bonfire was being lit, this time in the gardens of the Imperial Palace and Nesterin had been invited to the celebration.

“It may be an excellent opportunity to weed out your would-be assassin,” Leliana told her.

“And Vivienne wants me there.”

“Divine Victoria is arranging for this Revekah woman to be brought to us for questioning. You do owe her,” Leliana pointed out.

It wasn’t unreasonable but Nesterin couldn’t help but sigh and fret, frustrated at herself for letting Revekah slip away over something so trifling as a stabbing agony in her hip.

“She’ll be long gone if we do it that way,” said Nesterin. “I should just go back to the alienage tonight. I could try and track her down instead of worrying about dance steps and what shade of black to wear.”

“I would advise you that you can do more for our cause at the Imperial Palace.”

“I know,” said Nesterin heavily. She wasn’t a fool, she just always seemed to look like one.

“I show the humans that they have nothing to fear from most elves because I can play my part. And if needs be, if the worst should happen, Gaspard has his army and it will be at our disposal, so long as I remind him who exactly placed him on the throne,” said Nesterin, before adding:

“Briala knows the elves of Orlais better than anyone, and she’ll help us too- so long as I remind _her_ who placed her _behind_ the throne. And then chantry can instigate an Exalted March and the people will take up arms to defend Andrasteism, so long as I remind them that I’m the Herald they love so dearly.”

“Precisely.”

“It worked very well for the chantry last time. Not so well for my people, if I remember rightly.”

"I still haven't told the Divine about the elves changing. But soon we will have to. All it does now is help Solas that this information is being kept under wraps."

"I need more time, please."

Leliana’s patience had started to waver. Nesterin could read it in the slight crinkling of her pretty nose. The trouble was, and Nesterin could see it clearer and clearer with each passing moment, that the meaning of “our” cause was starting to shift and to change. Perhaps it was easy for Leliana to sort Solas from ally into enemy, perhaps the wolves in the rotunda were still laughing at her, but Nesterin had promised to _love_ him. A foolish, short-sighted promise she’d made when the pain and the lies and the revelations had been swimming up in her brain, but one that was not so easily broken.

In a dark part of her, she almost wished that it could be.

And Nesterin couldn’t forget Halamshiral. She couldn’t forget the bones of her people scattered across the Exalted Plains.  War was hell. Killing twisted red templars was hell. Hurting mercenaries and Venatori was hell. Judging war criminals,  slaughtering revenants and ordering men out to die was hell, hell, _hell_. It had changed her. It had hardened her heart. Now, she’d never be the girl who’d stayed with her clan, who’d married a kind-eyed boy she’d known her whole life and who had no secrets. She would never have his fat-cheeked daughters. All of her Hope had gone from her. It had slipped away silently in the night, laced with a foul-smelling poison, taking the child with it.

If there was to be a war this time, if elves had to meet humans on the Exalted Plains once again and she had to stand on the side of the chantry, Nesterin half-prayed that she wouldn’t live to see it.

“I’ll do as I’m told, Leliana,” said Nesterin as she looked at her hand. “I always do as I’m told.”

* * *

The first part was easy. Perhaps Solas wasn’t wrong when he’d told her that she nursed a secret affection for Orlesian drama and detail. The dress she wore was as elegant and encasing as the last had been. Her full skirts were a cascade of layers, like black water churning in a whirling pool, whilst the polished beads at her throat and bodice caught the yellow lights of candles and glittered like stars in an inky dark sky. Nesterin had a thick black cape of furs to wear over her shoulders to stave off the cold of the night air and there was a single fur lined glove to match.

Then came the mask. These days wearing one was as natural to Nesterin as breathing.

Once she was ready, Nesterin walked down the corridor to find Olympe’s room. Through the window, she could see her sisters in the townhouse’s compact courtyard garden. The garden was small and sparse. There was a bench, a cherry tree, a gravel path, a manicured fountain and very little else. But her sisters, wary of shemlen rooms and shemlen furniture, favoured sitting in it above anything else.

Naturally, she couldn’t hear what they were saying. Elandrin was with them, she noted with a curl of annoyance. He stood behind Laisa while she waved her hands animatedly towards Bel who looked very grave. Perhaps Laisa had not forgiven her for the hospital, Nesterin thought. Her sister’s disgust and her bitter disappointment still struck Nesterin deep in her core when she remembered their conversation:

_You sell Halla piss to shemlen. Just like Pa. You simper. You hurt our people._

Those words were ringing in her ears still as she walked down to Olympe’s room. Nesterin tapped on the door firmly.

From behind it, Nesterin heard a muffled sort of squeak and a fumbling of objects and skirts. She was about to ask if she should come back later when she heard an overly cheerful voice say,

“Come in!”

“Before a large event like this, Josephine and I would always go through the guest list together. I wondered if you had any insight?” Nesterin asked as she stepped into the room.

A barrage of floral perfumes greeted her. The room was a chaotic scramble of pinks, peaches and yellows. Petticoats lay strewn across the floor, along with bodices, ribbons, silks and feathers- all in shades of black that clashed with the decor. A vanity table was piled high with puffs and vials, tinctures and what Nesterin could only think of as small torture devices. Across the mirror, to obscure it, Olympe had draped a large throw rug. At the centre of the chaos sat the Baroness, maskless once again, with smears of kohl clearly showing the marks of her tears down her pockmarked and scarred cheeks. Olympe grabbed a handkerchief and began to rub violently at her face, but the evidence was already clear.

“Yeth, yeth, of courth!” she said in a high frantic voice. “Joethphine ith tho clever. What a wise idea. I should have thought...The Game. Yeth, one mutht be prepared. I thuppoth you both truly know what it ith you are doing.”

“Olympe. Slow down,” said Nesterin, frowning.

The Baroness seemed so in command, giggling and smiling in her frilly clothes that Nesterin had assumed she would be an expert in The Game. Or else why would Leliana have chosen her as an escort? Indeed, Olympe had been perfect at the hospital- as charming as any Orlesian was expected to be at all times. But here in this room, more than the petticoats looked well and truly ruffled.

“Are you alright? Has something happened?” Nesterin asked.

“Oh, I’m thorry. No, no. Nothing hath happened. It’th thimply a...a big night.” Olympe’s voice rose at the end and a sob escaped her throat. She pressed her handkerchief to her mouth and shook her head. “I hath nothing to wear. Nothing at all.”

Nesterin looked down at more clothes than most Dalish would have ever seen in their lives. When she’d gone to the conclave she’d worn three layered tunics to keep out the cold, roughly woven and coloured like moss and dirt. Only the first layer was ever washed, the rest had been patched and mended so many many times. Shifting her corset, Nesterin stooped down to sort through the black petticoats and bustles.

“We’ll find something,” Nesterin told Olympe. She stopped to pick up a breast panel, delicately woven with beautiful, intricate, undoubtedly expensive lacework and held it out to the Baroness.

Olympe didn’t even notice it. She kept the handkerchief pressed to her mouth, tears pricked in her eyes and she stared into the middle distance.

When confronted with such a scene, Nesterin doubted that anyone would not feel a stab of pity for the woman. She’d been so kind already and Nesterin felt immediately guilty. Obviously Olympe was not looking forward to the evening and if it hadn’t been for Nesterin descending upon her hospitality- four Dalish elves in tow, along with a Qunari bodyguard and an unimaginable amount of baggage- the woman would not have had to go in the first place.

“You know, I still feel like an imposter every time I come here,” Nesterin tried, smoothing the breast panel and placing it delicately on the bed. She picked up a petticoat and did the same. “But then I remind myself that I’m far from the only one wearing a mask. The Game seems very lonely sometimes.”

Olympe shook her head. “No, no. The Grand Game ith _everything_. The highetht art. The highetht culture. The highetht politicth. Without it we are animalth. I...I love The Game,” she insisted. It stank of lies.

“You can talk to me, if you like. We could be friends,” said Nesterin plainly.

It was true and Nesterin hoped it smelled as such, venturing a small smile before adding: “I think I would really like to have a friend tonight. Whether she has information about the guestlist or not is of no importance to me. But my friends are invaluable. I need someone to laugh with me and lift my spirits. And to save me from all the awkward nobles who want a second dance.”

The second part was no joke. In Orlais there were always nobles who were used to bedding their elven servant girls, who had only heard stories about the exotic savage beasts who lived in the woods and called themselves Dalish.The nobles called her beautiful _thing_ and lovely _creature_ and when they danced they dared to touch her in places they would never try with the human girls. There were muttered words when she turned away and sometimes a gleam in their eyes that spoke of an expectation that made her feel like soiled cloth. Perhaps it would be different now that she was venerated by the chantry- Nesterin dearly hoped that it would be.

But Revekah spoke true when she said that humans loved to see her kind on their knees before them. Any elven girl amongst shemlen would have said the same.

Olympe’s face crinkled up. “Yeth...yeth you will dance,” said the Baroness. She was human so she misunderstood, reaching out to touch Nesterin’s face. “The mathks hide uth, but we all know. We know you are a beautiful creature and they all know that I’m…I’m... _thith_.”

She gestured to her face and Nesterin felt the painful pang of a memory. Of the first time she saw her bare face in the glass. Embarrassed, alone and emptied out- she’d only seen a stranger staring back at her.

“What happened?” Nesterin asked Olympe.

“A pox. My lady’th maid caught it from the alienage and she gave it to me when I was nineteen,” said the Baroness, her eyes drifting towards the covered mirror. “I do not pretend I wath ever a beauty. But I had charm enough and good breeding. There were thuitorth and...one who loved me. He promithed he would marry me.”

Her voice had the wistful, heavy quality of a bitter loss. Nesterin knew it well.

“He’ll be here tonight,” Olympe went on to explain, reaching out for a puff so that she could frantically and distractedly attack her face and decolletage with powder.  “I have not seen Normand in many yearth. His father had companieth abroad and he was alwayth away. I did not mind. I hath alwayth been an independent creature. I amuth mythelf, I have many passions. But...I alwayth thought...he promithed to marry me once..he promitheed and I believed him.  It is not delicate, but you underthtand?”

“Yes,” said Nesterin heavily.

“He laughed at me the latht time we met. I’d given him everything and he jutht laughed. Men can be tho cruel when they are young.”

“He sounds like a dog, Olympe,” Nesterin trembled. “But he’s not going to hurt you tonight. If he even dares, I’ll see to that.”

 _Men can be cruel when they are young?_ asked a familiar voice as Nesterin left Olympe to get changed. Amaril had returned to her. _They can be crueler still when they are old..._

That first time, in the Fallow Mire, surrounded by the shuffling corpses, glistening bogfishers and stinking brown marshland had not exactly been what she’d envisaged. Solas had gone to her, half-addled by the death of the place, and had touched her,half-frantic with a desire to bury the horrors of mortality inside of something warm and alive.

She’d practically been chasing him like a determined courser hound for weeks, she’d been willing and it had been wonderful. Not quite real, not quite a dream, the aching intimacy of the moment had set her burning all over. But the brief burst of colour and kisses had given way to a cold bite of reality. 

In the aftermath, his face and been a story of utter misery and horror. He wouldn't even look at her as he dressed himself.

“I,” he swallowed heavily. “I am sorry. I know the dire consequences of action without thought as well as I know my own hand. And yet I seem to insist upon walking these same roads over and over. It’s either madness or the very worst kind of pride.”

She saw misery in his every movement. From the way he pulled on his tunic to the way he held his shoulders and bowed his head. It was as far away from the phrase “elven glory” as it was possible to get.

“I desperately do not want to hurt you,” he said, finally looking at her. “Not you. Never you.”

“I think it’s supposed to hurt the first time,” she’d confessed.

After that, she’d wanted him to hold her, perhaps kiss her and settle into the bedroll beside her. But at her confession he had only swallowed, nodded and left. Outside, the wind howled and the corpses moaned.

“I don’t know how you can be so determined to save him,” said the woman beside her, miserably.

Nesterin looked over her shoulder and saw, sitting on her bedroll with her knees tucked into her chest, the wraith-like shape of a person. She was not quite solid, fuzzy around the edges and translucent in the centre but Nesterin could see her. She had yellow hair, spilling down her shoulders, a plain square shaped face with a long nose and narrowed eyes. Her ears were large, her lips were broad and her face was marked for Mythal.

“Amaril, you have a shape,” Nesterin said with a dull surprise. She could not express more than that, still hollow with sadness as she gazed at the entrance to her tent.

“When you asked me before, I tried to remember. And there was a hand, on my head. So I had to remember my head. And then I remembered my whole body...so this is what I looked like I guess,” Amaril sniffed. “I’m not very pretty, am I? I could have remembered it better, but it wouldn’t have been true.”

“Is that why you brought me here?” Nesterin asked bitterly. “So I remembered it true?”

“You only had a little while together. You dwell on the good memories but those are running thin these days. And you did wish you could find a way to go back on your promise.”

“I didn’t mean it,” snapped Nesterin. “I don’t want to see these things. You're trying to twist everything up."

“I don’t want to remember either,” Amaril countered. “I _died_ in Mythal's temple. I can feel it. I died choking and screaming and hopeless and alone. But I’m going to have to remember that to help you, aren’t I? I remember more and I _feel_ real. It hurts and it isn’t fair. You going on and wasting your life on this pointless task while I don’t have anything left,” she sniffed in sharply and looked around the tent. “You _weren’t_ real to him here. Don’t try and pretend that you were.”

“He changed,” Nesterin insisted. “He _can_ change. This wasn't the whole memory- it wasn't all just misery. He did come back, we talked, he made it right and I forgave him. Because that’s loving someone.”

“You walk these same roads over and over,”Amaril warned her. “It’s either madness or the very worst kind of pride.”

* * *

 It was cold that evening and the Imperial Palace looked as if it could have been carved from great sheets of glistening ice. Once in the gardens, Nesterin watched the breath rising from her mouth like coils of smoke and gazed out at the vast manicured lawns. Everything was perfectly symmetrical, from the well-kept grass to the geometrical pathways and the boxy green hedges that made the walkways seem like twisting mazes. Grand fountains were carved into elaborate scenes and marble statues lined the edges of the paths. They made her think of the garden of stone corpses that Leliana had shown her in the city.

In the dim glow of the many torches and candles placed around the gardens, the people were a tangle of masked strangers. A servant in fine black and silver livery announced her along with many of the other guests who entered. There were Marquis, Baronets, Lords and Ladies alike. She overheard that the Divine would be making an appearance, though it was not yet fashionably late enough for Vivienne.

With her arm linked through Nesterin’s, Olympe sweetly steered her through a blur of nobles, happy to be of use and her usual charming self. But Nesterin caught her glancing over her shoulder nervously throughout their time together, trying to catch any glimpse of the man who tried to break her heart.

“Do you know the Vicomte de Fisk? I’m sure I offended him once. Possibly by reaching for my glass over him. Possibly by just existing.”

“Hmm?” asked Olympe, distractedly.

“Not a chance,” offered The Iron Bull from behind them. “That guy’s too cheap for an Antivan Crow. Look at the armpit of his jacket. It’s not clear but you can just about see the black dye rubbing off and the blue underneath it. Clearly didn’t want to pay for new clothes. But he’s got seven expensive rings sitting on his finger. Family heirlooms. But not cleaned or kept in shape- so he’s not sentimental about them. If he wanted you dead, he’d pay some thugs to stab you in an alley.”

The Iron Bull was clearly having the best time exercising his observation talents. In a vague attempt to stand some chance of enjoying herself this evening, Nesterin set a wager. First to find her would be murderer wins. Cash and the chance to set a forfeit.

In the crowd she tried to remember all the masks of the various well-to-do Orlesian families, separating foe from friend.

There were associates of Josephine; Vicomtesse Elodie de Morreau who had a weakness for blue cheese, Chancellor Jurgen Haulis of the University of Orlais who told very good jokes and Duke Cyril de Montfort who always pestered her about Varric’s latest novels.

“I’m not sure how far he has gotten yet, My Dear Lord Cyril. I think he’s still just getting settled in Kirkwall,” Nesterin assured him when Cyril finally cornered her.

His family mask was the sharply pointed visage of a pine marten or a weasel and his jacket was black velvet. Besides him, Nesterin noticed a man who was conspicuously unmasked. A foreigner like her undoubtedly, with curly black hair, a strong nose and a stiff black beard that had been groomed into two points.

“Yes but this one is about you isn’t it?” Cyril asked excitedly

“So I’m told. Which means it might take a while yet. My story can’t really be written if it isn’t finished.”

That made the man with the two-pronged beard laugh in a wheezy fashion. “Yes. It is very inconsiderate of you that you should still live.”

He spoke with an accent that Nesterin felt quite sure was from Tevinter.

“Sir?” she asked. She smiled and she fluttered her eyelashes a little, but she turned fully to listen to him carefully.

“Of course. You must let me introduce myself,” said the man. “I am Celsus Gallien, I’ve just begun work for our embassy here in Orlais. Frankly, the Orlesian court baffles me, but Funalis at least has the place looking more like Tevinter. We cannot abhor colour there and the fashionable among us always wear black. You particularly, My Lady, look as if you could be the toast of Minthrathous.”

He had that leer and look that she so loathed. Celsus neglected to mention, but so clearly implied that she would only ever be dressed this fine in Tevinter for one reason. To bed a magister.

She turned, hoping to be saved from this conversation by more questions from Cyril but he had wandered away. She could see The Iron Bull looking a little unsure of himself in his role as bodyguard, but there was not much he could do unless Celsus became actually violent. Nesterin gently placed a hand on The Iron Bull’s bicep.

She could weather this. She’d done so before.

“For you southerners, there are- as far as I see it- three great heroes of our time. The Hero of Ferelden was a pretty little rattus, I hear, who very promptly and very smartly dropped down dead after slaying the archdemon. That lovely corpse made for a lovely tragedy.”

Nesterin felt a squeezing in her stomach. She said nothing, but when a servant wandered close to them with champagne in flutes, she nearly forgot herself and snatched the whole tray. Instead, she made do with clutching onto the thin glass stem of her own glass, sipping neatly and saying nothing as Celsus went on:

“As for the Champion of Kirkwall, I hear you know more about his unfortunate fate than most. But he has not been seen these long two years, has he? Trapped inside the Fade for eternity if the rumours are to be believed. Mystery stories are even more fascinating than tragedies, I think.”

Nesterin gritted her teeth.  She tried desperately not to dwell on the aftermath of Adamant. The demon had roared, they’d pulled her away. She’d had to tell Varric. And her heart had nearly broken.

“Then there’s you. The Herald of Andraste. The only one who remains. The fastest talking elf in Thedas, they say. Do you know, The Black Divine has declared you a heretic? If you ever step on Tevinter soil it would be grounds for your execution.”

“No, I didn’t know that,” said Nesterin sharply. She turned to look at The Iron Bull, who may have heard something from Dorian. But he simply shrugged.

The man wheezed out another chuckle. “It is true, _My Lady_. And yet the whole world waits with baited breath to see what you will do next. We know that heroes rarely retire, but they are always so hard to predict. Stories are much more easily manipulated. There must be many who would prefer you neatly packaged into a box.”

He stepped closer and brought with him a smell of oils and boot blacken-er and blood. Moving her hair and placing his lips to her ears, he whispered:

“I heard tell of a rumour. Look to the Emperor, my pretty lying rattus.”

He licked her ear from length to tip and she felt sick to her stomach.


	19. Donnant Donnant

“He thinks it’s funny that I’m here,” said Nesterin, snarling around another glass of champagne. “He thinks it’s hysterical that the Orlesians treat me like a lady when I’m really just another rat in the gutter. He felt superior humiliating me like that. Superior to the whole of Orlais. And now he wants to get in my head. He wants to rattle me about like a toy.”

“In a nutshell, yeah,” said The Iron Bull gruffly. “Is it working?”

She twitched, she trembled and she gulped down more champagne to steady herself.  The sun had begun to rapidly slip out of the sky, draping a curtain of darkness over the Imperial Gardens. Masked harlequins dressed in black and white moved mechanically through the crowds on stilts, performing tricks and acrobatics  like gurning automatons.A troupe of scantily clad elves danced to drums, twirling fire and swallowing burning swords.

They wore a cheap, sexualised approximation of Dalish costume, Nesterin noticed.  Little scraps of leather barely covered their bodies,  they wore  stringed beads and silken leaves twining up their legs and arms. Their faces were painted, but not for any god that Nesterin had ever seen. It was black kohl that looked Dalish enough for the Orlesians, but would be wiped off after the show.

“Yes,” said Nesterin darkly.

“I could beat the crap out of him and you could set his beard on fire?”

“A Tal-Vashoth and an apostate mage turned loose in the Imperial Palace and onto a man who probably has diplomatic immunity? It sounds brilliant, Bull,” said Nesterin with a harsh laugh. “But Vivienne would be pissed off. No, this is Orlais and I’m the Herald of Andraste. I have to do something more befitting my station.”

“Rise above it and accept it with grace and dignity?”

“Fuck no. I’m going to do something incredibly petty and spiteful.”

She separated herself from the crowds of people and strolled further down the gardens with The Iron Bull in tow. Keeping a steady pace, she tried to maintain the air of one taking a simple walk, quite positive that she was still being watched as always. Nesterin clasped her hand around the elbow of her other arm, keeping it demurely behind her back, stopping by a patch of flowers and herbs and bending down as if to take in their sweet scents. But she had alternative motives in mind.

She could slip a little witherstalk into the man from Tevinter's drink and watch him start to hallucinate strange shapes in the crowds. Small amounts of Amrita Vein might have him shitting his pants for an evening. But the solution came in a much simpler form; a few tangles of white string-like plants hanging down from one of the stone garden walls. A pretty strain of rashvine- not as potent as the red vines that grew from the walls and rocks and trees of open Orlais, but certainly enough to cause an unpleasant itch when strategically placed inside of a man’s trousers.

Positioning herself behind Bull’s massive form, she neatly wrapped her gloved hand around a pretty silk handkerchief and pulled a small handful of vines away from the stone. Folding the handkerchief she placed the vines inside of her bodice- for once thankful for the many layers of tunics, under dresses and corsets that Orlesians wore to separate their clothes from their bodies. That done, all she had to do now was wait for the most opportune moment to exact her revenge.

Her plan, however, was interrupted on the way back towards the revellers by a footman in black and silver livery. On a tray was an elegantly written note. It was addressed to her, inscribed with a thick confident hand and sealed with still warm wax.

_Lady Herald,_

_Would you do your old ally the honour of a brief audience? Meet me in my smoking room._

_Gaspard_

“Want me to come with you, Boss?” asked Bull, after Nesterin had finished reading and had handed the note to him. “The Vint did say you should look to the Emperor.”

Nesterin shook her head. “Emperor Gaspard was a Chevalier. He’s always adhered to their codes. He won’t have me murdered in his smoking room- there’s too much dishonour and deceit in it.”

Or at least that was what she hoped.

* * *

 

The haze of Gaspard’s smoking room had an impenetrable, almost dreamlike quality to it. The tobacco stink, coupled with noxious fumes and gases, clung to the deep red furnishings and muddled her senses. Grey clouds hung heavily in the air, obscuring much of the room, twisting furniture into things unrecognizable. It seemed to match perfectly the hazy tangle of motives at the heart of Orlesian politics.

With a cloud of gas around his head and a mask on his face, the smoking Emperor sat like the sun behind the fog at the very centre of it. As Nesterin entered, he stood up and she saw that he was also dressed in black, with a dyed ermine slung over his shoulder- it’s dead eyes replaced with little glistening, unblinking black beads. She curtseyed for him and kept her sharp ears twitching for the slightest sounds, should her eyes and nose fail her.

“A drink?” Gaspard asked her and naturally, she accepted, watching the Emperor pour out for her a glass of deep coloured port from a lavishly wrought glass decanter.

“I always toast to the Empire,” Gaspard told her. “For it’s continued health, wealth and stability.”

“To the Empire,” Nesterin assented.

Gaspard had always been quite pleasant to her from the start. She remembered his slightly mischievous smile when he had led her by the arm through the doors of the Winter Palace on the night Celene died. He hated The Grand Game and Nesterin could appreciate his lack of patience for the double-speak and the backstabbing. She could appreciate even more the Chevalier’s code that he adhered to, they were so like the Knights of old that she had always admired and aspired to be like.

The port was dark as blood and rich and sweet. She appreciated that too.

“Why did you want to speak to me?” Nesterin asked, plainly. She knew he would prefer not to hover around the pleasantries for too long.

As predicted, Gaspard chuckled. “It's always business for the Lady Herald, no? I thought you were supposed to be retired.”

“Peace is fragile, Majesty. It always wants working at.”

“I know that better than anyone,” Gaspard agreed. He took a sip of his own glass and sighed quite heavily. “I must confess to an old friend that I have made a very foolish mistake.”

He spoke gravely but from underneath the mask, Nesterin felt sure that she spotted a twinkle in his eyes.

“As Emperor, I naturally, have a duty to provide an heir and cement my legacy,” Gaspard went on. “My first wife was murdered before she could give me a child and for the last two years Orlais has waited with baited breath to see what sort of a match I would make.”

“I’ve always wondered whether Orlesians wear their masks in their bedrooms too. The Game never ends does it?” asked Nesterin.

“In an ideal situation, no,” Gaspard agreed. “Which is precisely my problem. I sought to make a good political match and I found one. Lady Marie Therese de Concordant. Her family is relatively new but they are magnificently wealthy- the business of glassworks. I could build three new empires from the ground up with their money. Marie Therese is the perfect wife for a marriage built on politics and convenience. But I have regrettably fallen in love with the damnable girl.”

“How awful for you,” said Nesterin drily.

“She’s everything I despise. Practically a younger version of my first wife, silly and spoiled and a consummate player of the Game. Her family is even worse, there is nothing they would not do and no one they would not destroy in order to take a single step up this confounded ladder we must always climb.”

“They were the ones who tried to have me murdered,” Nesterin puzzled out, thinking of the glass vial.

“The terms I consented to with you and Briala at the Winter Palace are not as agreeable to my bride-to-be. She both resents and is suspicious of your role in my ascension to the throne. Perhaps she also sees how the people of Orlais love you and remembers how well you looked upon my arm at The Winter Palace.”

Nesterin snorted. “She doesn’t imagine an elf would ever sit beside an Emperor does she?”

“An elf sits behind me, Lavellan,” said Gaspard sharply. “Always behind me. Always scheming. You gave her power for some idealistic sense of loyalty, in some ways I admire your honourable sentimentality, but you did not know the nature of her character. Briala is a snake, a rodent, a…”

“The word you’re looking for is 'rabbit'. Or possibly 'rat',” said Nesterin coolly. “Did you know that they would send an assassin after me?”

“I imagined you would defeat the crow. One arm or not, you can handle yourself.”

“So you sat back and did nothing. You figured that you could find a way to benefit whatever happened to me.”

“As you did for Celene,” Gaspard pointed out. “You must have known what would happen. But you did not stop her assassination, did you? Her blood is on your hands... _hand_. And Florianne’s. My sister would have been an exile or an inmate for the rest of her days, but she need not have died. You are a ruthless woman, I did not think you would take offence.”

Nesterin finished her port in a quick gulp. The cloying sweetness was so thick, so much like blood and she fought very hard to keep her face cool. He was right, of course. Celene had died because she had hesitated. Hesitated and wondered if a new world for her people would grow out of the bones of a dead woman. Nesterin poured herself some more port so that she could drown her hypocrisies.

“Will they try again? I know a contract with the Crows is a contract until the deed is done.”

“I don’t want to kill you,” shrugged Gaspard. “You are my ally. You gave me my Empire. And you’ve been reasonable before.”

“You have terms, I take it?”

“Nothing much,” said Gaspard. “I want you to facilitate a renegotiation of terms with Briala. Orlais is enjoying peace and I want to keep it that way. In return, I’ll convince Marie Therese to remove the contact from your head. And,” here he smiled as if this were a Game of Wicked Grace he had a serpent in his hand. “I will provide you with fifty good men and women. Your own personal guard of chevaliers.”

Nesterin frowned at him. It was not the offer she had been expecting to hear from him.

“What do I need guards for, Gaspard?”

“Divine Victoria was once the lover of my father-in-law. We are good friends. I know when something is troubling our Madame de Fer. You too are troubled, my friend,” he explained.

Perhaps the masks did not hide all that they were meant to. Or perhaps there were things that refused to stay hidden for long.

Nesterin considered his offer. Another assassination attempt would be quite the inconvenience to her and she could achieve her goals more easily if she was no longer looking over her shoulders for Crows. Similarly, Gaspard’s request seemed reasonable enough. But she also suspected that this was the point of it and that his motives may well be hidden beneath the attractive package of sensible words.

Despite herself, she thought about what Solas would do.

“May I take some time to consider it?” she asked Gaspard.

“By all means.”

* * *

“I just won the wager,” said Nesterin when she met up with The Iron Bull again outside.

By now, the crowds had swelled and the alcohol was flowing very freely. The voices of the nobles had grown beyond hushed whispers into laughter and song. In the light of the many torches and the dancing flames of the fake-Dalish dances, the night air had a sickly, smoky, yellow quality to it just like Gaspard’s hazy smoking room.

“Who is it?” Bull asked her.

“The Emperor's jealous lover.”  

“You’re fucking kidding me!” he growled with mirth. He chuckled a little, adding fondly, “Your life really is one of Varric’s shitty romance novels.”

“No one in their right mind wants to read this romance,” said Nesterin bitterly. “Here,” she changed the subject by pushing her silk-wrapped rashvines into The Iron Bull’s chest, “Your forfeit. Put half of the rashvine in the handsy Vint’s trousers. The other half is for a man named Normand Legrande.”

“Who?”

“He fucked with Olympe. Another prime candidate for itchy britches. Be sneaky.”

“I’m twice the size of everyone else here,” The Iron Bull pointed out.

“Be twice as sneaky then. In the meantime, I’m going to celebrate a job well done.”

She gestured to one of the servants with trays and took another glass. One of the great tragedies of only having one arm was that she could not take two champagnes at once. Nesterin’ made up for it by making short work of the first and grabbing another before the servant could go away. The bubbles fizzled in her nose and went straight to her brain. She let out a sharp high hiccough.

The Iron Bull watched her and hesitated a moment, “Maybe you should take it easier tonight, Boss?”

Nesterin flailed her hand and slapped him away, “It’s a- _hic_ \- party, isn’t it?”

It was almost time to light the largest bonfire and the guests began to slowly drip down the gardens towards it. Her corsets had started to dig into her as she walked, wavering slightly from a line that was strictly straight and true. She hiccoughed again and fixed her eyes on the great funeral pyre. Sticks that were more like the trunks of small trees had been piled up into a bundle roughly the height and size of a family home in an alienage. She noticed as the fires roared into life, that they had stopped short of actually placing some sort of Andraste effigy atop it.

But Nesterin could imagine her. Dressed in white and tied at the throat and hands. Perhaps the chantry said she went to death with a quiet dignity, but she must have screamed. Screamed and wailed and cried out to her god and her true love. Who had just let her burn and burn and burn.

 _You could have been the Empress,_ said Amaril as the fires started to warm Nesterin’s face.

_What are you even talking about?_

_You’ve got money, you’ve got popularity and you’ve got beauty.  If you’d played the game and flirted a bit more with Gaspard instead of moping over your apostate hobo,  you could have been the Empress._

_You’ve gone mad, Amaril. More likely I’ll end up on a pyre like this one here if I get too many more ideas above my station._

_You don’t think you can get an Emperor, but an Evanuris is no problem? I knew girls like you. We laughed at them in the temple for thinking that our masters would do anything but chew them up and spit them out.  Gaspard would have stayed. He would have been happy that you were carrying his child._

_Solas-_

_-He knew. Of course he knew. You called out to him in your dreams and he heard you. He just didn’t answer._

_I suppose, along with your form and your face, you’ve started to remember that you used to be a real bitch, Amaril._

Sniffing, Nesterin grabbed another drink. Her stomach was full of the bubbles, the wine churned itself up into a storm inside of her and her head had begun to spin, but she took another sip. She couldn’t hear the voices in the well if she didn’t listen to them, she told herself. And they didn’t have to talk to her unless she actually had a use for them.

 _That’s it,_ Amaril sniffed faintly. _Get drunk. Pretend like you can shut me and everything else out._

* * *

So she did pretend. She looked up at the bonfire and imagined it all burning away. Flames at her feet, flames at her legs and her arms and her hair. Flames as close and tight as a lover’s embrace. Like when Solas would encircle her from behind, touching her collarbone and her hair, pointing out over her shoulder and up towards the stars.

Nesterin embraced herself with her single arm, feeling cold and pathetic. Looking behind her, her eyes took in the crowd of masks and  the grand white towers of the palace. Near the bonfire there was a small red and yellow tent, another part of the entertainment put on, a sign outside of it reading _Dalish Fortune Teller._ Nesterin snorted. If the Dalish knew fortunes then it was a skill that had woefully passed her by.

She hiccoughed and was pulled out of her reverie, glancing over her shoulder and having to do a double take.

In the firelight his hair was very yellow indeed, his face was without a mask and illuminated with a perfect clarity. Strong and human and Ferelden, with a scarred lip and a scruff of a beard, she looked at him and he looked, momentarily, at her before returning to the bonfire.

For a moment, she wondered why he didn’t seem to recognise her until she remembered that she was wearing a mask herself. Smiling, she took it off and went to stand beside him.

“Ara seranna-ma **,** Cullen,” she said. “Don’t- _hic_ \- tell me that one of those awful Orlesian hens finally got her beak into you?”

“Inquisitor,” he said dimly, blinking at her. She got a perfunctory bow but she shook her head.

“Nope. You’re- _hic_ \- as bad as Cassandra. You have to call me Nesterin,” she insisted, her voice a little slurry.

“Nesterin,” he tried, before fixing his eye upon her. She saw him take in all of the pomp and the frills of her dress with a slightly pained expression on his face. Perhaps it was strange to him, Nesterin thought, seeing her armless and in a dress instead of armour. Perhaps it really confirmed just how _over_ the Inquisition was.

“You look…” he struggled.

“Like a fancy Orlesian blackbird of death?” she supplied.

“ _Very thin,"_ said Cullen softly. 

“Corsets,” she shrugged. “How are you? What are you doing here? Are you truly and actually here as some Orlesian lady’s suitor?”

Cullen laughed faintly and scratched his nose. “Not quite. Though it may have to come to that. I’m here looking for Orlesians with deep pockets. My templar sanctuary needs patrons.”

More than most, it had taken Nesterin a long time to warm up to Cullen. In truth, he’d frightened her more than Cassandra- who’d threatened to kill her more than once. He’d frightened her more than Leliana and The Iron Bull too. And Blackwall and Vivienne and the whole parcel of the strange not-Dalish people who had filled up her small world so quickly. As a Dalish mage, Templars were everything she’d been taught to fear since the day she’d come into magic. That he was large and male and somewhat taciturn had made it worse. In the beginning, she could only ever picture how useless her magic would be against him and the unforgiving nature of Templar steel.

But that had all been her own prejudice. All her own fault. Cullen was good and kind and knowing him had made her come to regret casting off the call for help from the Templars in favour of the mages as quickly had she had done. Likely many Cullens had died through her inaction as well as her choices.

“How much do you need?” she asked him.

“Ummm…”

“How much money do you need, Cullen? I’ll give it to you. I don’t - _hic_ \- know precisely how much I have. People just tell me ‘a lot’. You can have it for your sanctuary.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You can. What am I supposed to do with it otherwise? I...I’m not likely to - _hic_ -grow old and have heirs to give it to am I?  Better to put it to some actual good use.”

Cullen frowned, opened his mouth. Then closed it again, before finally asking, “How _are_ you?”

It was the same tone that The Iron Bull had used to ask her if she was okay and it made her feel like an invalid. She pulled on her hair, wrinkled up her nose and said, “I’m fine. I mean, I got shot in the neck but that’s just Tuesday isn’t it?”

“Nesterin...if you wanted...would you like to-”

Whatever Cullen was asking her, it was interrupted by a hand on her shoulder. She turned around to find another fake Dalish standing in front of her. Her black kohl vallaslin was an indeterminate smudge of shapes whilst she wore a strange collection of veils and shawls and cowls that no true Dalish would ever be caught wearing. Too many snags and loose fabrics to be caught in the trees and aravel wheels.

“Tell your fortune, My Lady?” asked the not-at-all-Dalish woman.

“I’m not sure if-” Cullen began for her.

“Absolutely!” said Nesterin, imagining it would be quite amusing if nothing else.

The fortune teller’s tent was small and dark, draped with rugs and adorned with beads and baubles and talismans to complete the phoney Dalish effect properly. It smelled of incense and grass and made Nesterin feel nauseous. Sitting down at the table in front of the fortune teller, she had to admit that the alcohol was well and truly having an effect on her.

“Two swords. The moon. The Hanged Man,” the fortune teller began, pulling out a random assortment of cards that Nesterin had no interest in whatsoever.

“What clan are you from?” she asked.

“A small one,” the fortune teller answered primly, pulling back the first three cards and shuffling her deck.

“Uhuh. And your vallaslin? It’s not one I’ve seen very often. What God do you honour?”

“None,” said the fortune-teller shortly. But then she drew her eyes up to Nesterin. They were very large and very yellow and very wet looking, glistening in the low lamplight. “Particularly not Fen’Harel.”

It was a particularly effective means of getting Nesterin to shut up, stop smiling and pay attention. The not-fortune teller nodded and began shuffling her cards.

“There’s been an awakening,” she continued, placing down a card depicting the dawn. “But you already knew that. That’s why your sisters changed and why you have them here with you now.”

The fortune teller placed another card next to the first. It was of the sky and the land. There were clouds in the sky, parted to reveal a trumpet.

“There’s been a calling too. Some in the alienages answered it. Some of us refuse it.”

Next to the second card, she placed one with a figure struggling to carry a bundle of several sticks.

“Briala worked hard to carve the first stone steps into a great mountain. The climb will surely be hard and long and dangerous- but she’d rather not see the mountain flattened on a liar’s vague promises.”

So that was the trick, Nesterin realised. There was no power of divination here, only the power of a network of spies. The fake fortune-teller was simply one of Briala’s.

“Me either,” Nesterin insisted. “Tell her that we feel the same way.”

“She knows. She wants to offer you a gift. Something that you may be able to get more use out of these days.”

The next card that fortune teller laid down, Nesterin understood. In the centre of it was a large rectangle of glass, or not necessarily glass- more likely a mirror.

“S-The Dread Wolf told me personally that he’d taken control of the eluvians away from Briala.”

“Then you will need to find a way to take it back,” said the fortune teller simply.

“What does Briala want in return for this gift?” Nesterin asked.

The fortune teller gathered up her cards, sliding them back into the desk and shuffling them once more.

“Nothing much,” she said. “She simply wants to remind you that when you were given the choice between Gaspard and Celene, you chose her instead. She hopes that you will remember that there is always a third option.”


	20. Réduire en cendres

****She still remembered how the rotunda had a faint metallic tang of paint and plaster to it. And she remembered, always, the musk of old books and melting tallow fat paired with the scent of fresh pine. And she remembered the light but certain smell of Solas’ skin that had convinced her that she loved him.

Late one night, when Skyhold was quieter than a grave, she had sought him out.  She found him alone in the rotunda, washing brushes in a basin. There were several candles placed strategically about the room, bathing it in warm yellow light. Almost all of them had burned down to the dripping stubs.

The fresh smell of the shape of Adamant tower and the painted shield of the Grey Wardens filled her nose, while the colours of the quickly drying paint were bolder in their newness.

“You have excellent timing,” Solas said, smiling faintly. “I’ve just finished. I would have come to your room soon enough.”

“ _Adamant_ ,” she breathed wistfully at the fresco. The nightmare had not been long ago. Hawke was lost and the Grey Wardens were in ruin. How easily past triumphs could be trampled by the present. “Thank you. I did wonder why I couldn’t find you in the courtyard.”

She had looked for him in the scattered crowd that was stood before the scaffold. But then the headsman had come and she’d forced herself to look only at Gregory Dedrick, kneeling and bound at the wrists.

He’d accepted her judgement with a dignity that deserved respect. But when it came to it, he’d shook his head and trembled all over. Had trembled still for moments after his head had come away from his neck. Nesterin hated the chair in the Great Hall above every single place in Skyhold. It was large, imposing and uncomfortable to sit upon. No choice that came from it ever felt truly like the right one.

Solas stopped smiling when she brought up Dedrick. He turned back to meticulously treating the brushes.

“The fresco takes time and careful planning. It must be considered and executed wisely. Today was something of a rare opportunity now there is so much work to be done. And watching a man die may be entertainment in Orlais, but I prefer other means of occupation,” he finished sharply.

“You think I was being unwise when I sentenced Dedrick to death?” asked Nesterin.

She supposed she could not be angry at him for turning away from her. She knew she’d struggle to sleep tonight, what with the trembling of Dedrick’s body, the howls of the drowned at Crestwood and the nightmares of the fade.

“His death is a waste. The man had no choice. Most of the people of Old Crestwood were dying to begin with.  His actions condemned some to die, yes, but it saved many many more. He has lived with the guilt and shame of his actions for years. A grave enough punishment in itself.”

“A year ago I would have argued with you,” said Nesterin. “I would have said that the minority should never be sacrificed for the majority. That no man should be able to decide when that sacrifice should be made-”

Solas’s fingers flexed around his brushes, Nesterin watched his brow furrow and his eyes narrow slightly. He  took a breath as if to speak, but she got in swiftly before him:

“But I feel so much older now,” she said. “ I have the Inquisition to lead. And I think, divorced from romantic postulating and confronted with the actual reality, I could have chosen the same actions as Gregory Dedrick.”

“And you still chose to kill him? I didn’t think you a hypocrite, Vehnan.”

“If I did the same, I would want to die for what I did,” Nesterin confessed.

“That’s still romantic postulating, is it not?”

“No,” said Nesterin, with the heavy certainty that it wasn’t. “And when he stopped running and lying and he looked it in the face, I thought I could see that Dedrick wanted it too. Maybe I should have given him to Ferelden but I…” she struggled with the words. “I thought I understood him. Here, I could make sure it was swift and merciful and that he would die understood. I thought it would be a good death. If any death can be called good.”

Solas frowned at her. She forced herself to meet his eye, realising that she, at the very least, owed Gregory Dedrick the courage of her convictions.

“To die understood…” Solas murmured. He seemed to consider it, his lips twitched and again he smiled in his bemused, amused way. “But you’re wrong, of course.”

“Oh?”

“You would never have done what Dedrick did.”

“You think you know my own mind more than I do, Solas?”

“I was there when you threw yourself _under_ an avalanche,” he said sternly, but not without some degree of twinkling fondness. “Dedrick was pragmatic, whilst you certainly weren’t. And everyone in this hold still lives because of it.”

“Point taken.”

“All the same, most people would not have tried to look through Dedrick’s eyes before they decided whether he lived or died. You’ve done this before when you’ve sat in Judgement, I think,” said Solas.

“I think that’s how it has to be done.”

“It will take its dreadful toll on you in time,” he warned her.

“You know just how to cheer me up,” Nesterin said with a quiet chuckle. “You’re lucky I’m incredibly attracted to grim fatalism.”

“I’d suspected as much. It’s why I seduced you with cynicism,” Solas agreed.

“I never want poems and songs and flowers. Give me drafts of my obituary and prototypes of my grave.”

Her smile wavered there. Prototypes of graves was a little too close to the Nightmare’s vision of the fade. Nesterin’s stone had read, “ _Failing Them_ ”, which was predictable but rattling nonetheless. It was also a fear that was inescapable. _Them_ , could be so many people, her clan, the Inquisition, the Dalish, elves, the whole world. While each road she took and each choice she made seemed laced with failure.

“I feel the toll a little now actually,” she confessed. “I thought you might have been painting. I was hoping you wouldn’t be finished and I could watch. I know I’ll never sleep tonight. The fade seems closer now we’ve been in it. My dreams are so _raw_ these days.”

“I’ll send for some tea,” Solas suggested. “I would enjoy talking with you a while.”

She was forgetting, Nesterin realised, how much they had talked. In the beginning, in the middle, even after the end, they had talked more than anything. Kisses and touches and the nights he spent inside of her might come to her with a startling clarity that she felt all over her body, but the memories of talking were growing foggy now. Blending into one.

He used to make her laugh, she dimly remembered that too. He made her laugh more than he made her cry, even though the crying was what she remembered most now. And she made him laugh as well. Not soft, wry chuckles either, loud bursts of musical laughter that squeezed her chest and made her beam.

That night, the night Gregory Dedrick was executed, they drank strong black tea (Solas pulled a face with each sip) and talked until the sun came up. At one point she must have drifted off because she found herself blinking the world back into focus, tucked into herself on the couch in the rotunda. Solas was sitting next to her when she woke, his hand was on her head, idly tangling through her curls.

“How long was I asleep?” she asked, wiping her mouth on her sleeve.

“I’m not sure,” Solas confessed. “Not more than an hour, I should think.”

As it turned out it, she had been asleep closer to two and a half. The muffled sound of footsteps and voices filtered gently from upstairs but seemed so far away. The candles had all burned away but a faint light from the windows above cast thin geometrical shapes onto the floor.

“You didn’t find me in the fade?” asked Nesterin.

“I didn’t sleep. Too much tea, perhaps. It tends to distract my thoughts.”

Pulling herself up, Nesterin moved to plant a brief kiss on his lips. Once again she was caught off guard by the passion with which he caught her kiss and returned it. The hand on her hair moved now to her waist and she was pulled flush against his hard angles and heavy bones. He kissed her deeply and firmly, his fingers tiptoeing across her warming face until she was left breathless by him.

Funny how she’d called him _hahren_ in the beginning and been convinced of his patient, measured and slow manner. He didn’t kiss her like a hahren, he certainly didn’t fuck her like a hahren. In some ways, it was like moving towards a hearth for warmth only to be consumed by the blaze.

She really ought to have realised that, sooner or later, she would end up burned.

“Ma serannas, Solas,” she gasped against his mouth when their kiss was broken. “I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you.”

In the present, Nesterin sighed and put her hand to the eluvian. It was cold and dead to the touch.

* * *

 Briala’s people were swift in delivering an eluvian to her. With it, came a large grey stone, about the size of an apple. There was a note attached to the stone that read:

_This keystone used to be redder than blood.  It allowed me to control all of the Eluvians in Orlais with a mere phrase. When I lost the network, it turned grey. It makes me sick to think of the people that killed and died for this hunk of rock. Does the Dread Wolf laugh at the small games we must play? I once knew somebody who would have an answer. Perhaps you have one too._

The eluvian sat now, obtrusively, in the room she occupied at Olympe’s townhouse. Poor Olympe had frowned and pressed her lips together when it was brought in, making Nesterin feel guilty for already imposing so much upon the other woman’s hospitality. By rights, she should make arrangements and find a house in Orlais for herself and her sisters, but settling in Orlais was all but unthinkable. By now, she’d hoped for a trail to follow, a trace of Solas that could indicate where he was, where he had been or where he was going. But the Dread Wolf remained elusive and there seemed to be no news of him.

Or, and she had to concede that this was a possibility, news of him was being deliberately kept from her.

So she turned to the voices in her head. If their view of the present was cloudy then they at least knew the past better than any living soul.

 _There was life once in those roads. Colour and sweet smells and our people moved through them freely,_ one of the voices told her.

 _The Crossroads were a knot of danger, darkness and locks when I remember them,_ said Amaril gloomily. _The Evanuris controlled them._ _They controlled who moved where and to what end. The rest of us were trapped. We should have built roads. Our whole way of life was tipped in favour of the masters from the start and we did nothing to change it._

 _Fen’harel changed it though,_ said Nesterin. _He used the eluvians in the valley to free slaves._

_And now he has the whole lot of them._

For days, the cold, unusable eluvian unsettled her. There was a draw to it, it tugged at her senses and was heavy with the loaded silence of a pause for breath before speaking. It reminded her so much of the Well of Sorrows which had called out and she had answered. It would be easy, Nesterin imagined, to sit and sit and sit, staring into the void of it, slowly losing pieces of herself and gaining nothing in return.

 _Try to remember please, Amaril,_ Nesterin begged the woman in her mind. _Does this eluvian remind you of anything. Of anyone?_

 _Marks,_ said Amaril. Nesterin could almost feel her straining. _Birds. The shape of birds. And blood. The temple was red and full of birds and...and...I can’t breathe!_ Amaril gasped. _I can’t breathe._

_Amaril! Amaril, calm down._

_It wants to come out,_ whispered Amaril. _But I’m frightened of it. I died in the temple and I died for something. What was it? Why did I die? It feels so flimsy. So far away, as if behind-_

 _Behind a veil,_ Nesterin conceded. _This is too much to ask of you in the waking world. Your memories might be recovered from the fade. Mine were once when I thought they were lost to me. When we go to the spire, the veil will be thinner. We can try there._

“Do you think you’ll be able to get into it?” came a voice from behind her.

Nesterin heard the low rumble of rounded vowels formed in a man’s throat and for a moment her heart pounded. Whirling around, she was only confronted with the sinking feeling of disappointment. Elandrin came into her room and stood staring at the eluvian.

“I don’t know,” she said coolly.

His thick dark hair was pulled back into a braid and he had rustled up a new outfit from somewhere, a woven shirt dyed many bright colours that seemed obscene against the dead mirror. Just the presence of him annoyed her.

“You know, in Orlais it isn’t proper to just come into someone’s bedroom,” she said

“Laisa tells me you used to sleep crowded into an aravel with your aunt, your uncles, your cousins and your sisters. I didn’t think you’d be offended.”

“You aren’t one of my cousins or my uncles, Elandrin. You aren’t even of our clan.”

“I’m sorry. I just desperately wanted to see the eluvian.”

Nesterin laughed bitterly, “Did you now?”

“I’ve never seen a working one before,” Elandrin explained. “Once, on my travels with another clan, we found the ruins of a little stone offering table for Ghilan’nan. There was a frame, like this one, that sat empty near a crumbled wall. What had once been inside was now taken or broken. We all wept bitterly to look upon it, for it seemed to echo so closely the fall of our people.”

His smile waned and something like sadness crossed over his handsome features. Nesterin trusted it about as far as she could throw a druffalo. She barked out another cold blast of laughter.

“Your stories might work on my sisters, Elandrin,” she warned him. “But I’m older and I’ve seen more of the world.”

Elandrin stopped trying to be charming for a moment and his lip curled.

“You don’t like me do you, Nesterin?” 

Elandrin’s frankness took her, briefly, unawares. But she collected herself quickly and returned:

“I don’t know you. I don’t know anything about you.”

“I’m an open book,” said Elandrin, throwing his arms open theatrically. “You can ask anything and I will answer.”

She paused. Questions like, _are you a spy? Is he having you watch me? What do you know of his plans? What do you know of his past?_ Would likely only be answered with vehement denial.

“Why are you still here? Why did you worm your way into my sisters’ confidence?” she asked instead if only to watch him wriggle and lie.

“I didn’t _worm_ , I offered them assistance when you were indisposed. In return, your sisters allowed me a chance witness this story so that I may share it with our people,” said the Keeper without a clan hotly. Perhaps Nesterin had managed to rattle him because he ran his hand distractedly through his hair, screwed up his face and added a little desperately,

“And, for what it’s worth, I think your sisters are charming! Bel has the kindest of hearts, Mirwen is funny and brave. Laisa is an infuriating, _wonderful_ woman who-”

“- I know the nature of my sisters,” Nesterin snapped impatiently. “I don’t need a stranger to tell me.”

“You’re the stranger to them!” said Elandrin loudly.“ You don’t know, do you? I’ve been instructing your sisters all this time. They came into their magic late and without the proper guidance. Fear of possession and of the circle haunts them night and day! You’ve been so busy with your shemlen and your Dread Wolf that you neglected to remember that fact.”

Nesterin could feel a tinge of heat touch her face and a rush of shame slipping over her. Had she really been too busy to see that her sisters were frightened? Had they really had to turn to Elandrin to teach them instead of her? She tried to bury it and focus on her anger.

“If they want help, they can come to me.”

“Can they?” Elandrin asked. “You’ve shut yourself in your room for the last two days, staring at a dead mirror. And if it’s not that it’s some party or parade or other disgusting chantry display.”

He strode over to the side of her bed where a collection of empty wine bottles had begun to amass. Elandrin picked one up and shook it at her, but she grabbed it from him.

“This is none of your business,” Nesterin snapped. “They forced themselves here and you forced yourself here. I knew I would be busy. I told them not to come.”

“They were frightened. When the Dalish turned on them, they were rejected by the only people they’ve ever known. Here, too, there’s no place for them. Your influence keeps them from the alienage, but who will talk to them in this part of town?” Elandrin looked down and trembled slightly, “We try to walk with pride, we keep to the Vir Tanadhal only to find our history is _wrong_. Should you defeat Fen Harel, our past will probably be lost from us forever. And our future is only misery. There’s no place for us in this whole world.”

Nesterin gritted her teeth. Elandrin’s words were dangerous and too, _too_ familiar.

“Have you been saying this halla shit to my sisters?” she asked him icily.

“They can see it for themselves. Laisa was seized upon by Dalish because she would not conform and wore her face proudly bare. She was attacked by a shemlen calling her a dirty rabbit. She weathers it admirably because she is strong and intelligent and she embodies vir bor assan, but every day we spend in Orlais is another wound to our pride.”

“How _old_ are you Elandrin?”  Nesterin demanded.

She narrowed her eyes and watched his reaction closely.

He only blinked at her, “Thirty-six next month. I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

 _Liar,_ something said inside of her. _Liar, liar, liar._

“I don’t think it’s proper for a grown man of your age to be so intimately acquainted with my young sisters. Particularly under the same roof as them,” she only sniffed instead. “You claimed once to be cursed with infertility but that seems like a  rather convenient thing you can tell the young Dalish girls you meet on your travels.  I’d rather not test it out on my sisters.”

“I wish to help them, not bed them! _Fenedhis_ , I’m not like that! The curse of Isala means-”

“-Then it will be no great wrench for you to find a new lodging. Olympe’s hospitality was extended to my family and I. You’re not my family.”

“Where would I go?” asked Elandrin wildly. “I have only the legs I stand on and the pack I carry and I will not leave Val Royeaux. I will not leave those girls to the demons at the door!”

“I don’t care where you go. As long as it’s away from me. Preferably starting from now.”

“The Herald of Andraste,” said Elandrin bitterly, shaking his head. “Famed for her grace and compassion.

“You should know better than to trust stories by now, Elandrin.”

Elandrin screwed up his face and turned to leave, but before he did, he hovered in the door and told her, quietly,

“You were deceived by the greatest trickster in our history. It must have hurt you terribly and there’s no shame in that.  But I wish you’d remember that not everyone else is worthy of such mistrust.”

* * *

 Elandrin might well say that. But he didn’t know the world of humans like Nesterin did. He’d not been forced into it and then forced at the front of it and then been told to dance or die.

Once a ghost had stalked the dark, labyrinthine corridors of the White Spire. Behind locked doors, mages died and many more wore sunbursts, moving like faint smudges of people from white wall to white wall. The boy who’d been Cole had died in the White Spire and that seemed reason enough to tear it down. But the Spire remained, peopled and living once more- filled with mages and new templars. It was a great white sword thrust into the sky, poised on the point of tearing into it.

“Divine Victoria says we’re to give you a tour,” said the Knight Vigilant who greeted her. He was called Ser Andrew Cawdon, a barrel of a man with friendly Ferelden features and a red beard. There were several Templars arranged atop the vast white staircase, their armour shined to its shiniest, their buckles polished, their straps blackened and all for her. Nesterin doubted many other mages got the same reception, her stomach hurt and her throat felt sore.

“A tour?” she asked. “I wasn’t expecting that. You are very kind to offer, but I simply ask to speak with the First Enchanter and for a place to lay my head tonight.”

Knight Vigilant Cawdon smiled at this. He knelt down and there was a great clanking of armour in the process, he took her arm and Nesterin fought not to flinch, bringing her hand to his forehead.

“You have the grace of Andraste, my lady. I can almost hear her in your voice,” he rumbled.

Nesterin wanted to beg him to stand up. Frankly, it was horrible. Horrible standing at the top of the stone steps where mages had been dragged and left to die. Horrible watching Knight Commander Cawdon kneel when she knew that she’d sided with the mages over the Templars in a heartbeat.

Did they still control the Templars with lyrium, Nesterin wondered?  She had several mines of her own, Olympe had shown her the deeds amongst the rest of Josephine's expertly sorted inventory. Better to give the mines to Dorian and Varric equally, she thought then. She wouldn’t let the chantry take them.  

Since the Templars thought her protests were platitudes, Nesterin couldn’t get out of the tour.

 _Are you going to show me the cell Cole died in?_ She thought about asking. She thought about it through her parade through barracks, mess halls, corridors and alcoves absolutely teeming with people. _The dank, disgusting cell where the Templars just forgot about him and left him to rot?_

“Many of our templars are very green,” Cawdon explained to her with a beaming smile as they walked. “It has it’s positives. Grizzled veterans are always set in their ways and this is to be a new spire. New spire, new divine, new templars. We pathe a bright future for everyone who lives together here.”

It was a pretty way of saying that, after Vivienne had been made the Divine, what was left of the Templars had hated it and what remained of the college of magi had hated it. There had been an uprising, after all, hadn’t there? Though little trace of it seemed to remain. Cawdon was eloquent for a Templar, Nesterin noticed and he could spin practically anything into a positive:

“Divine Victoria has ordered for hundreds of additional rooms to be added to the spire. It’s our belief that once mages see how far she has risen through the circle, they will be more likely to come to us willingly.”

And:

“Dungeons? Yes, some remain. These days we see them more as a break from dormitory life. Tensions rise when people live together so closely- trust a man who’s lived his whole life in barracks, heh. I know I always appreciate some time away for myself. Best night’s sleep of your life down in our dungeons, I assure you, My Lady.”

She began to suspect that this talent for spinning the truth was what had landed him the position of Knight Vigilant. It would certainly have endeared him to the Chantry.

One thing Cawdon could not spin to his favour, however, came in the form of a locked door and raised voices from behind it.

“It’s impossible and frankly arrogant to assume that you can march in here and demand answers. We have our orders, we are performing them to the letter. This circle is no longer failing. We don’t need any extra eyes combing through our business.”

“I outrank you, Hyatt,” snarled a woman, “I will judge whether or not this circle is failing.”

“ _You_ outrank _me_? Perhaps once. All I see now is a forgotten woman who squats in the mountains.”

There was a great clatter of armour or furniture or other heavy things, Cawdon tried to distract Nesterin and pull her attention away from the door but it burst open. On the other side, Cassandra stood, as furious and righteous as she’d ever been.

“Cassandra!”

Cassandra was truly pissed off by someone or somebody, but Nesterin couldn’t help herself. She smiled. A silly thought crossed her mind that she could put her arms around her friend. She’d missed her. But Cassandra was snorting and huffing like an angry dragon, and Nesterin didn’t particularly want to lose her only remaining hand.

“Inquist-”

“No.”

“Nesterin,” said Cassandra. Her voice softened slightly, but then she looked back towards Knight Vigilant Cawdon . “I need some air. You should join me,” she told Nesterin.

* * *

 “The Seekers as you knew them had many flaws, but our purpose was clear. We sought the truth, we delivered the Chantry from corruption. I went to the mountains to rebuild the order and to keep it free from hypocrisy, but in our absence the Chantry is becoming a nest of lies and pageantry.”

Cassandra knew the spire far better than Nesterin. She took them to a spot, high up on the battlements where the whole of Orlais could be seen. The Imperial Palace twinkled prettily as the red sunset slid across the sky, the coloured houses of the rich merchant’s districts were bathed in a warm glow. The hard stone face of the Grand Cathedral seemed bathed in fire, and the shadows lengthened across the vast walled alienage.

Nesterin could feel the thinness of the veil and the hum and the pulse of her mana. The air here tasted like burning fruitwood, boot polish, blood and silk.

“I’m sorry, Cassandra. All of this veneration business was never my idea and I swear to you it was done without my consent.”

“It’s not you. It’s _her_ ,” said Cassandra bitterly, looking out across Orlais to The Grand Cathedral where the Divine must have sat at this very moment. “The Chantry is not an extension of the Grand Game and yet she is trying to make it so. That woman is a tyrant in a ball gown.”

There was a tremendous pain in Cassandra’s voice. The pain that came from watching something you love become corrupted, from watching it twist into something unrecognisable, just beyond your grasp.

“I sometimes think….” Cassandra began but she shook her head.

“Sometimes think what?” Nesterin persisted.

“That I could have done a better job of it. I could have rebuilt what was broken, I could have united those who seem so fractured now. Did you not...when the Chantry asked you...did you sincerely believe that Vivienne was the best choice?”

“No.” admitted Nesterin, heavily. “I actually asked them to consider Leliana,  I thought that she would have been sympathetic to my kin. To the elves and mages alike.”

 _Or maybe she would have been once_ …

Cassandra laughed softly. “On paper, we should not have been friends,” she said.

Nesterin couldn’t argue with that. But, despite all things, they were.

“I think you would have made a wonderful divine, for what it’s worth,” said Nesterin. “But you also told me you didn’t _want_ to be the divine. I would never have presumed to know what was best for you."

“I should have thought more about what was best for Thedas.”

“They might not have listened to me either way. My influence only ever went so far. And now I can feel their thumbs on me. Pressing down and trying to squash me into shape, or just to squash me like a bug.”

She could tell Cassandra she was frightened. She could confess that she was struggling and not have to second guess how it would be taken. It was good to talk so openly, with each word Nesterin felt a little lighter, even if the topics she must dwell upon were heavy and oppressive.

“Does she want a war?” Nesterin asked Cassandra, tipping her head to the Grand Cathedral. It was a suspicion she’d nurtured ever since Leliana had taken her to the garden of stone corpses.

“You know the chaos that came after Vivienne was declared divine. It still lingers,” said Cassandra. “Blights and archdemons have a way of bringing fractured people together and they have a way of solidifying the grasp of those in power. Why should another false god be any different?”

“A false god?”

“Solas named himself as such,” Cassandra pointed out. His existence had not shaken her faith in the Maker. Nesterin doubted there was much that could. She envied her friend that.

“But he still has more power than we can possibly conceive of.”

“Nobody thought that we could defeat Corypheus. Solas called himself a mage. A powerful mage but a mage nonetheless. Templars spend their lives learning how to control mages. If the Chantry marched against him we might yet stand a chance.”

“And where would that leave me?” asked Nesterin, breathing heavily. “I still love him. I love him so much, Cassandra. Even now. ”

It was the first time in months she had said it out loud.

Coupled with the tingle of the veil against her skin, the words seemed so potent when spoken from the white height of the spire. Up here, she could taste the reality of loving him. It was bitter. Cassandra sighed.

“What should I do?” Nesterin asked her.

“I don’t know, my friend,” Cassandra confessed. “No matter how we might wish to, no matter how much easier it might seem, we cannot forget our hearts.”


	21. A Dream of Amaril

****The yellow weeds are still growing in the house of Mythal. They find their way between the great marble slabs. They push out of the dirt and the dark, and they reach towards the sky. The High Priestess used to have the gardener pull them up with a thin hook and a knife, but they always find a way through. They always search for the sun and the sky.

The High Priestess threw herself off the high wall in the Hall of Shrines. She dashed her head on a carved stone tile and her brains spilled out of her skull. She’s still there now. There are insects in her eyeballs. I never saw dead matter suffer the indignity of an end without Uthenera before. It smells of spoiled meat.

The High Priestess _is_ spoiled meat, I remind myself. Littering up the Hall of Shrines.

The Hearthkeeper is spoiled meat.

Sprawled inside the Petitioners’ Chamber.

The Archivist is spoiled meat.

She poisoned herself in her quarters.

And forty more priests and servers besides.

Scattered here and there like fallen leaves

Some of them tried to enter Uthenera. 

The others came and laughed and cut off their heads.  

Flies crawl in and out of their lolling mouths.

Some of them are still cloistered below.

They will slowly starve to death in the coming months.

And the Sentinels who tried to guard them?

Slaughtered into chunks and splashes of blood.

And Mythal too. Though they took her away.

 Spoiled meat. All of them.  

 Nobody has cleared them from the temple. The Ones Who Came Next are marked for Falon’Din so maybe they like it. Vultures and parasites are always drawn to corpses. Maybe they like the stench in the air and the quickening decay. Freedom has only lasted for a heartbeat- days at best for me- but the faces of the dead have already changed in the time I’ve been gone. They are a different colour now. Some of them purple. Some of them white. Some of them are yellow like the weeds in the temple.

“This is the executor?”

Hands push forwards. I stumble, bound at the wrists, before the steps in the courtyard. Four of them sit or lie or slouch upon the stones. They toss a greying sentinel head between them. It’s Glandival. I didn’t know him well, but I knew him enough. He had a burbling laugh like a drain. He had sharp brown eyes that are now covered with a strange milky white film.

“We found her near The Temple of Pride. Still marked for Mythal,” says one behind me.

The Temple of Pride? It is only a blur to me. Lush greenery and deep forests and the rush of falling water. And my hands are brown. Brown with wet mud. Digging. Digging deep and desperate. Before they found me.

“A hearth virgin,” says another of my captors. He runs a finger along my neck and buries his nose in my hair.“Unbroken. I can smell it. It has to be her."

I strain against my ties, trying to pull myself from out of his grasp. They tug sharply on the rope and I fall to the floor, squealing.

 “Stupid girl. You fell right into our trap,” laughs one of the ones on the stairs. Her eyes are yellow and narrowed, she’s smeared her lips with blood. She tosses Glandival’s head, throwing and catching, throwing and catching, over and over.

“I don’t know what you’re on about,” I say, gritting my teeth as I struggle to stand. Only blurs and shapes come to me. Blurs and shapes after the vivid smell and sights of death in the temple.  

“Then why did you venture so far from the house of your beloved Mythal?” a man asks from the stairs. His hair is white. Falon’din is his master. He is dressed in black and feathers. “The others stayed and died. We took care that your hearth sisters knew the pleasures of flesh before we cut them from belly to breast.”

Numin, Athim, Melava. My sisters since I was a novice. I thought they were all fools. They wept and sat and waited for the arrival of their hideous deaths. But I was caught trying to run. I am a fool too.

“I think you just answered my question,” I growl. “ If Mythal is dead then I am no longer beholden to my vows. Why the fuck would I sit around and wait for you to rape me and cut off my head?”

“So you sought out the Temple of Pride?” asks the woman now holding Glandival’s head. “Strange choice for a hearth virgin, no? You fled into the crossroads and picked this place out of all the places in all the world? Why?”

“It is the place to petition for freedom. It was ever known to us here,” I tell them.

“Of course it was,” growls another on the stairs. He spits thickly onto the ground. It hits the wrist of a dead servant “You people really are disgusting, eh? Did you ever see the Dread Wolf suckle on Mythal’s tits? Did he fuck her on an altar somewhere? I bet you all watched. I bet they had no shame in it.”

“You can defile the dead with your words all you want,” I say plainly. “You’ll not see me weep or rage for Mythal’s memory. I only wanted my freedom. I’ve wanted it for the past four hundred years.”

I used to watch the yellow weeds growing in the temple and I understood them. We came from out of the dark and the dirt and we kept our faces turned towards the sun and the sky. I fled when she was dead already. I wanted to breathe in the air beyond the temple walls. That was all.

But my captors are for Falon’Din. They know nothing of mercy.

“Stop talking!” comes a wheezing from behind my ear.

The others, dressed in black around me, stop their smiling and their chattering and they part. Through them comes one in long robes with white hair. He wears the face of decrepitude and death, with sagging skin, contorted features and the rolling white eyes of blindness. An augur, unmistakably.

He comes to me, stinking of the decay that sits so heavily in the temple, and he touches my face.

“Stop talking, child. So I may hear,” he wheezes. His voice is quieter than a whisper but I hear it echoed in the farthest reaches of my mind. He shuts his eyes and presses his fingers against the skin of my cheeks.

The augur claws inside my mind, pressing down on my memories, pulling others towards the surface.

Panic. I see the panic. I see the days of blood and the days of pain. I see the sentinels fire their arrows in the air and I see arrows burn and break and miss. I see my sisters crowd around the Hearthkeeper and weep. I stand and she calls to me. She touches my hands and she speaks. She binds me to my final duty.  But her voice comes to me as if underwater. I hear nothing but muffled vowels. I see only blurred shapes and running colours.

“She is the executor,” says the augur firmly. He turns to my captors with narrow eyes,“You are all of you idiots. You should have watched her more closely when you took her. She made herself forget.”

 _“_ Stupid bitch,” I hear hissed behind me.

Magic twines around my neck, pressing into my throat. I gasp and choke. I don’t want to die here. I don’t want to die in the temple. I should have killed myself in the Oasis. Just as they came. The sun would have been on my face. I could have died free.

But I don’t want to die. I don’t. I don’t.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! I don’t know it, I swear it!” I say desperately.

“Can we recover the knowledge?” one asks the augur.

“The memories are not gone. Simply locked away. Perhaps under the right circumstances...she could be compelled to find them.”

If I knew why they wanted me, I would tell them all my secrets in a heartbeat. Mythal is dead, the Hearthkeeper is dead so why should I care about betraying them? I would have betrayed them living too, in a heartbeat. _I do not want to die_.  I think of the Oasis. And the dirt. I go through the wet mud with my fingers, trying to find what was hidden there.

“We could start with her fingers first?” suggests the woman with bloody lips. She flexes her fingers, filled with the dark power that so many deaths have granted her. “Then her toes. Then each limb. One by one.”

The augur shakes his head. His milky eyes look into mine. They are a terrible void that sees inside of me. I see myself, an orphan brought into the petitioner's chamber, left inside of the temple for hundreds of years. I see my mother and my father on the day the pillar trembled. The sea heaped onto our village and drowned our whole world.

“Take her to the well,” he says. “Hold her under the water. She will speak.”

“No,” I shriek. I am weak and they are strong. My body is little and useless, my magic is feeble against theirs’. But I have a voice and I can scream. I can’t _stop_ screaming.  “ _NO. NO. NO._ Have mercy! I beg you. Have mercy.”

The well is away from the temple proper. It’s just a simple well. Sometimes the petitioners are permitted to bathe in it, to cleanse themselves. Mostly we draw water to clean the temple stones from it.

My mother and father died drowning. I remember my mother's skirts fanning around her before the tide took her away. I don’t want to die.

“No! No, I know nothing. Let me free. Please,” I beg and scream and cry as I am dragged to the well. “I do not love Mythal. I never loved her. I only want to be free. Don’t. Don’t.”

“Shut your fucking hole, you stupid bitch.”

“Remember. Little snake. Make yourself remember.”

“I’ll do anything,” I whimper as I am forced onto my knees. “Please, I-”

They force my head into the well. I try to pull myself up but the hands holding me down are so much stronger than I am. It takes a moment before my lungs are on fire before I’m twitching and screaming and all I can see in front of my eyes is the swirling darkness at the bottom of the well.

“Where is it?” the augur demands when they pull my head up. “Where is the memory?”

I whimper and I shake my head. My chest heaves and hurts and my face is wet from the well and my tears alike.

“Again,” says the augur. “Again and longer.”

I sob messily. I try desperately to pull my hands out of my bindings, I try to wriggle my head upwards to find the smallest pocket of air. I need air. My lungs pound like a drum. I need air. I need air. I need air. And all around me, in my eyes, in my mouth, in my nose, only water.

“Where is Mythal’s orb?” the augur snaps as they pull me up again.

I gasp, snot in my mouth, my hair in my mouth. My burning lungs pull in as much oxygen as they can. _I will remember,_ I tell myself. The Oasis. I will remember and they well let me live. I see The Temple of Pride. I see the wet mud. My mouth gulps and hangs open like a dying fish, I push out a sound.

It sounds alien on my lips. It was not the word I had meant to say, but it came to me all the same.

The augur seizes my face, and I am too tired and too limp to struggle. His white eyes roll backwards and he goes into my head again. He curses under his breath and violently releases me.

“Her memories were buried- but she did not bury them.”

“What does that mean?” one of the others asks.

The augur stands up, shakes out his robes, and starts to walk away.

“She can’t unlock the door if she never had the key,” he says, sounding bored. He flicks his wrists and adds: “Children of Death, she is yours to play with…”

They come to me with hungry eyes and twisted lips. I scream and plead and pray. But my God is dead. She will not answer.


	22. Bon gré mal gré

She woke up gasping, choking, struggling and screaming. For a moment, Nesterin felt certain that she was drowning. There was water in her lungs, a pressure on the back of her head and a heavy darkness closing in all around her. Pure instinct had her body tense, fighting the invisible hands that were trying to hurt her. And fighting the visible hands that had been trying to wake and steady her. A human woman stepped back, dressed in robes, clutching a bloody nose. A second human woman shook her,

“Stop now,” she said firmly. “Stop and wake up. Wake up at once.”

“Where am I?” Nesterin panted.

“The White Spire. You asked to sleep in the tower, Lady Herald,” the woman narrowed her eyes. “Do you not remember?”

Nesterin’s throat felt as if it were on fire, her chest was tight and filled with a sharp pulsing pain. She leaned over the side of the bed and coughed again. A cluster of sputum and dark clots of blood hit the floor of the room with a wet spatter. She gazed at it woozily, and then she felt her eyes roll back as the whole world turned black.

_I can’t breathe, called a small voice in the darkness. Help me please, I don’t want to die._

* * *

 

Nesterin was on her back when her eyes opened. She lay in a large dark room, on a table draped with a sheets. Various dusty bottles and tinctures sat on shelves whilst various anatomical paintings had been hung from the walls. An older, but not elderly human man with grey hair stood near to her. His mage’s robes were rolled up at the sleeves and covered with a linen apron, he wore rounded lenses of purple glass in a gold wire frame in front of his eyes.

“Back with us, I see?” he said to her, busying himself with a pestle and mortar, pounding something that smelled faintly of peppercorns into dust. “I told them you weren’t possessed.”

He looked over, briefly, at a female templar with black hair who was stationed at the door. A curl of annoyance seemed to pass over his features.

Nesterin tried to sit up and she groaned. Every one of her limbs felt heavy, her skin felt heavy, even the air in the room felt heavy. Her mouth was dry, her throat ached and she felt so entirely sapped of energy.

“I’m Lewes, the overseer of healers at the circle.  I’m very good at my job. And you’re very lucky to have me,” said the mage matter of factly. “Drink this.”

“I feel like I’ve just had an avalanche fall on me,” Nesterin groaned. She took a sip of the warm concoction that she had been given. It was pleasant at first but had a chalky aftertaste to it.

“Well, I wouldn’t know about that,” said Lewes, adjusting his purple eyeglasses. “But right now, you mostly feel like shit because we gave you magebane.”

Nesterin would have bolted upright if she wasn’t so weak. Instead, she jerked woozily and felt immediately nauseous.

Lewes read her distress easily, patting her shoulder and explaining, “Standard procedure around here when one of the mages wakes up screaming and vomiting blood. It’ll wear off in an hour or two.”

 _But I’m not one of the mages here,_ she wanted to snap.   _I’m the Herald of Andraste. You can’t just slip me magebane_. Though, of course, that would sound utterly repugnant when spoken out loud. So Nesterin bit her tongue, trying to force down her anger.

The red templars sometimes coated their swords with magebane. The smallest knick was enough to see the poison take effect. It didn’t feel like tranquillity, Nesterin still always felt her emotions, she still felt _herself,_ but the mana coursing through her usually felt stifled and stuck, like a blocked pipe.

Like lungs filling up with water.

_Amaril._

_Amaril? Are you here?_ She called out internally. The dream of the temple had been so vivid. She had watched through the eyes of Amaril, feeling her pain and her thoughts, her fears and her memories.

Nesterin heard only silence. Perhaps it was the magebane, blocking her connection to the voices from the well.  

 _Our energies supercede your own paltry, broken connection to the fade, da’len,_ whispered one of the voices. _You are merely the defective vessel._

So perhaps not then.

Perhaps Amaril simply wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.

“But you also feel like shit because you are, essentially, a bag of loosely tied together injuries,” Lewes continued, “You got this healed by magic, yes?” he tapped her throat lightly. “And this?” he tapped her hip through the sheets over her.

“Yes.”

“It’s good work. Very good,” Lewes acknowledged. “And you did a bloody good job of trying to counteract it. These wounds should have long healed by now. Do you often find your wounds are slow to heal?”

Nesterin wondered if emotional wounds counted, but she shrugged and rubbed her nose. “What’s fast and what’s slow? I had a lot of fights in the Inquisition. If I could be healed fully with magic, I was. If I couldn’t, there were always more wounds to tend to. I just had to get on with it.”

“I would advise against _just getting on with it_ the next time you get shot in the neck and abdomen, My Lady. That’s how people lose their left arms. Lot of nasty bruises on you, Lady Herald. You’re getting a bit yellow around the eyes too,” he tapped her cheek, next to her eyeballs. “See that one on a lot of the corpses coming out of the alienages these days.”

Nesterin narrowed her eyes at him, trying to work out if yellowing eyes was another complication of Solas’ apparent fade tinkering, “Why out of the alienages?”

The answer Lewes gave her, however, was far simpler.

“Elves are poor in Orlais,” he shrugged. “It’s hard being poor. Poor people with hard lives turn to the easiest poison available and they kill themselves slowly with it. Drink less alcohol and eat more solid food. You’ll feel better for it. That’s the serious part.”

“There’s a not-serious part?”

“Oh, Maker, is there,” said Lewes, dropping his voice and giving a delighted shudder, “You drowned! In the spire!”

“I drowned?”

“I know, I _know_ ” he chuckled. “On dry land, in a locked room. Your throat went into spasms. There was _water._ Everyone’s saying we have another ghost now. We only just got rid of the last one.”

Nesterin used her elbow to prop herself up, trying very hard to ignore the spinning “Where’s the water?” she demanded.

“That’s a very weird question,” Lewes crinkled up his face. “Aren’t you wondering more about how it happened?”

“How did it happen?” Nesterin asked him flatly.

“No idea.”

“Okay. Now, where’s the water?”

“Wiped in a towel, maybe?There wasn’t exactly an ocean of it.”

Nesterin lay back again and put a hand on her face. Water? That didn’t make any sense. Water from Amaril’s memory in her throat?When faced with the impossible prospect, Nesterin found herself turning to literature. To quote a great writer:

_Well, shit._

“Divine Victoria wants a report, doesn’t she?” Nesterin asked Lewes quietly.

Very quickly, he caught her drift, leaning into her and making it look as if he were examining her throat again.

“Yes, she does.”

“And what are you going to tell her?”

“That depends,” said Lewes, adjusting his glasses.

“How much would ‘bugger-all’ cost me?”

Lewes chuckled, “I’m the head of all the healers in this Circle. I take my role very seriously.”

“So that’s a lot then? Fine.”

Taking off his glasses, Lewes reached over for a slim pad of paper that was sitting at his worktable.

“The fit was caused by lesions in the throat from a pre-existing injury,” he said loudly as he scrawled onto the pad. “Any notion of ghosts and drowning is just gossip from bored mages. The Herald is perfectly fine.Nothing a little bed rest won’t heal.”

Nesterin cleared her throat and shook her head.

“The Herald is perfectly fine,” Lewes tried again. “She can go about her business as usual.”

“Much better, thank you.”

* * *

After she had changed and cleaned up, Nesterin still felt weak and woozy. With the magebane, the air felt sticky somehow. Sticky and melted and of no discernible form or shape. The fade oozed rather than tickled over her and she moved as if underwater.

Outside of the door, Cassandra was there and Bull was there. Both of them oscillated wildly between fear and anger.

“Nesterin! I heard about what happened. We came as soon as we could! Was it poison?” asked Cassandra

“Don’t worry about coming, Bull. Take the night off. It’s the spire, Bull. Templars fucking everywhere, Bull. See, a bodyguard only helps when he can actually _guard_ the body,” the Iron Bull growled.

“I wasn’t poisoned. I wasn’t attacked,” Nesterin shook her head. “I just got a lead. I think.”

“What?”

“I’m sure Solas is looking for an orb like the one Corypheus wielded. Mythal’s orb specifically,” Nesterin told them. “I’ve been talking to a voice from the well in my head for a while now and she _remembers_. In bits and pieces, but it’s stronger here than anywhere. Last night I think I _lived_ her memory.  She was dying so that’s why I got a bit bashed about. But she knows. She knows possibly, more than Solas does,” as she said the last part, Nesterin smiled because she’d just realised it.

She had a plan. She had an actual plan with actual steps and an actual end goal. Even with the magebane slowing her, her throat burning, and the tremor coming back into her hand, it was galvanising.

“Good, right?” Nesterin finished.

They were both looking at her with an expression that could be best described as  _Iron Bull and Cassandra disapprove._

“You’ve been getting strategy tips by listening to a voice in your head? That sounds, no offence, like a fucking crazy idea,” said Bull.

“One of the voices from well is getting clearer and you experienced one of her memories? This sounds incredibly dangerous, Nesterin,” said Cassandra.

“Bull, do you have a better suggestion? Because we’ve been pissing into the wind for months now and I have been driving myself insane trying to think of how to get the edge on Solas. Cassandra, she’s not a demon. Even if she was, I took magebane this morning, we’re surrounded by Templars, this is the best possible place for me right now.”

They weren’t asking the right questions, thought Nesterin with a curl of disappointment. The right questions would be: did the memories exist in the fade and had Amaril just taken her to them? Did the memories exist in her, and yet somehow leave a physical trace? Water willed into her throat by a dream of drowning. It was magic she’d never seen before, pure, old, alien magic that belonged to long dead people.

And what about the temple? There was history in every thought and every word and every inch of space the light in her mind had touched. The voices from the well could tell her, but they couldn’t show it. It was like reading a dry book about Orlais versus actually standing in it’s street. Who was the augur? What was an executor? What did it mean to be one of The Ones Who Came Next? The temple was chaos, but what of the moment Mythal died? She sincerely doubted the All Mother would consent to the same end as the bodies littered all around her house of worship.

Those were the right questions. And yet Bull and Cassandra only asked her about Demon possession. Nesterin realised that the one person she really wanted to talk to about stopping Solas was Solas himself.

“Her name was Amaril and she died. Horribly, actually. They drowned her in the Well of Sorrows...only, it wasn’t the well of sorrows. It was just a well,” Nesterin told them.

“What did this Amaril show you in your dream?”

“I saw the day she died. She knew where the orb was. I think she hid it. Possibly in the Forbidden Oasis, near the temple of Pride.”

“Great, more sand,” The Iron Bull considered. “You’d think someone, somewhere in the history of the world would have figured out a way to keep sand out of your ass.”

“That’s assuming it's still there. This was thousands of years ago. Tevinter came, Orlais came, the mining companies came. I’m going to have to read the _shit_ out of a millennium of agonisingly dull textbooks, documents, inventories and requisition lists.”

“-and you sound weirdly pleased about it, Boss.”

“It’ll be like I’m sixteen all over again,” Nesterin grinned. “I’ll need to move here too, into the Spire. Just for a little while. If I keep dreaming, I might find out more and this is where the veil is thinnest in the city.”

There was energy coming back to her. A drink to celebrate and she’d probably be back to her old self. Her old- _old_ self, from the early days of the Inquisition. The one with hope. The one who’d made him laugh loudly and love her deeply.

Cassandra only frowned.

“And then what?” she demanded.

“I find it,” said Nesterin. “Wherever it is. Do whatever I have to and I break it. Just like I broke the first one.”

“And then what?” Cassandra asked again.

“I don’t know,” Nesterin said, pressing her lips together into a bemused smile. “I’m going on experience and assuming everything will go wrong for me at least twice anyway, so it’s loose plan more than anything.”

Cassandra still did not look convinced. In fact, she pinched the bridge of her temples and sighed. “I knew a story once when I was a little girl,” Cassandra began. “You should hear it. But I do not tell it well- no talent for such things…”

“Think about how Varric would do it,” Nesterin suggested. “Compelling, emotional, and then everyone gets splatted at the end.”

“I will take that on board,” said Cassandra drily before she began:

“Two soldiers go into battle. The first is a knight who has vowed never to kill, the second is a knight who has vowed to kill the first. The first knight is skilled, she does whatever she can to disarm the second and eventually she knocks both him and his sword to the ground. But she does not break her vows and she does not cut him down. So the second knight gets up and pulls out his dagger. They fight once more, tired now from the length of the battle. Again, the first knight disarms him, but she is still faithful to her vows and she does not cut him down. He gets up, pulls out a flail, and the desperate fighting lasts an age before he is once again disarmed. The first knight tells him to yield, he has no more weapons. She is as tired and injured as he, her armour is broken, his face is bloody. But she does not cut him down. And then the second knight gets up, picks up a rock and beats her to death with it.”

Nesterin listened, beginning to understand where Cassandra was going with her story. She clenched her fist and gritted her teeth.

“At least you got the splatted part right,” she said flatly when Cassandra had finished.

“It is a parable,” said Cassandra.

“It's not relevant. I need to go back to Olympe’s and get my things,” said Nesterin sharply, and she strode quickly down the hall.

* * *

_No._

_No what, Amaril?_

_I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want to see that again._

_We have to._

_Or...we could see **your** worst memory every night? How would you feel about that? Watching when your mother died screaming and stinking of blood? When you waited and waited and waited for your pa to come back for you, but he never did? When you crawled alone and frightened through the fade? When- _

_-I need you, Amaril. I need you on my side._

_Why? You heard the augur. I forgot._

_So we go back further. Amaril, we try harder._

_No._

_Amaril. If I die, if the world dies...then you’ll be gone too. Whatever you are now. It’ll be gone._

_Fuck. I don’t have a choice do I? It’s your body. Mine rotted into nothing in a fucking well._

* * *

 

Nesterin drank straight from a bottle of white wine and threw a few items of clothing into a bag. The only real problem- she thought- would be the eluvian, it had taken a lot of trouble to get it up the many staircases of Olympe’s tall townhouse and she didn’t particularly want it in the Spire, surrounded by Templars and mages who would either distrust it and want to break it, or who would be seduced by the possibility of it. It’d have to remain here, she decided, at least until she could think of an alternative.

Olympe said her sisters were more than welcome to stay in the townhouse, for as long as they liked, but she worried about leaving them too. Not just for a few days in the spire, but to wherever she might need to go in the coming weeks. Elandrin had not been wrong in saying that they had come into their magic late and needed guidance, he’d likely not been wrong in saying they felt abandoned by the Dalish and displaced in Val Royeaux. She also knew her sisters enough to know that they’d be bored to tears of months shut up in the comfort of Olympe’s townhouse. They were Dalish. The only songs they knew were of hardship and suffering.

“Unbelievable,” said Laisa from the doorway as she came to watch Nesterin pack, “You’re moving out? Right after you kicked Elandrin out onto his arse?”

“Something came up,” Nesterin shrugged. “And I would have sent Elandrin away whether I was here or not.”

“Why?” Laisa folded her arms.

“Because…” Nesterin struggled slightly, “he’s a _man_. It wasn’t appropriate. I know you’ve got a sensible enough head on your shoulders, but what he if tried to seduce Bel?”

Laisa burst out into savage laughter, shaking her head disbelievingly, “Okay so, Number One _:_  Bel is twenty-six. She went with Veassen for a year and let me tell you, the only one running around all moon-eyed and getting seduced was _him_ . We’re not waify idiot virgins, Nesterin. And Number Two:that’s such bullshit and you know it. _Seduced?_ When did you start using words like seduced?”

“Fine,” Nesterin snapped. “I think he’s a spy”

“You’re actually insane,” said Laisa with a sneer. “Do you think Olympe’s a spy? Do you think her cat Boots is a spy? Do you think _I’m_ a spy?”

“Come on, Laisa,” Nesterin begged, rolling her eyes. “He really expects us to believe that whole ‘My clan was cursed and now it’s just me left’ thing? He has the dodgiest sounding backstory I have ever, _ever_ heard. And, again, I worked with a fake grey warden and I was pretty close to an actual elven god for a year.

“He’s was born into clan Ishmorath. We met his _mother_ at the Arlathvhen. You would have too, but you _ran away and left us there_!”

“She must have been another spy. Or just some woman he paid. That doesn’t mean anything. Anyway, why do you even care? You said Elandrin was an ass.”

“Because you’re being an even bigger ass than he is!”

“Well, you’ve already made your feelings on how I behave in Val Royeaux perfectly clear,” said Nesterin bitterly. “I simper, I hurt our people. I’d like to see you try and stand my shoes for just one day.”

She took another deep sip of wine. Nesterin was aware that the doctor had told her to drink less, but- short of dosing herself with massive amounts of lyrium potions again to help her sleep and fight off the anxiety- it was the only thing making her task that little bit bearable.

“Yeah I’d probably fuck it up,” Laisa concluded. “Because this is the best we can ever hope for isn’t it? To be the one in a million elf who dresses up and dances all the right steps and says all the right words. And you know what the humans call that elf, the one who has all the money in the world and all the people bowing to her?”

“What?”

“A dirty fucking rabbit,” said Laisa savagely. She looked down and sighed. “I don’t understand why you aren’t _angry,_ Nesterin. Every day I stay here I’m getting angrier and angrier.”

“I’m angry all the time,” Nesterin agreed. “But you have to use that anger. You have to shape it into something that lasts after the fire’s all burned away.”

And then you keep fighting with it, Nesterin thought to herself. You keep fighting and fighting and fighting. Because you can’t give up. And then, when you are spent, the second knight picks up the rock and beats you to death with it.

“That’s his plan isn’t it?” said Laisa after a moment’s pause. She looked past Nesterin and into the eluvian.  Into the swirling void of its brokenness. “To build a better world for elves after this one is all burned up?”

“Yes. But he doesn’t get to decide to do that. He doesn’t know this world.”

“ _I_ know this world,” said Laisa darkly. “I do,” she added quickly when she saw that Nesterin had opened her mouth to speak over her. “I know that the humans in Wycombe were _this_ close to killing all of us. A group of them almost beat Yawen to death. We carried him away broken and bloody and they called us rats going back to the sewer. I know that the Dalish would have held me down and forced a slave mark on me because they couldn’t force one on you. I _know_ this world, Ma’lin.”

With that, Laisa sniffed sharply and turned and went back the way she came.


	23. Avec le soleil

_This is the executor... We found her near The Temple of Pride, still marked for Mythal... Did you ever see the Dread Wolf suckle on Mythal’s tits? Did he fuck her on an altar somewhere… The memories are not gone. Simply locked away... No! No, I know nothing. Let me free. Please... She can’t unlock the door if she never had the key…. I don’t want to die... Children of Death, she is yours to play with…_

So it went on. Night after night for more than three weeks. The sun set below the white spire, the sky flushed pink or burned orange or slid through varying degrees of grey before turning black and Nesterin and Amaril died together in the temple of Mythal. After choking on water, begging for mercy and gasping with agony, they surrendered always to the crushing darkness.

At first, Nesterin hoped for different memories, for flashes of the hours and days and weeks before Amaril was dragged past the bloody head of the High Priestess as she lay crumpled in the Hall of Shrines. But the dreams remained the same. She was brought before the people dressed in feathers and marked for Falon’Din, she pleaded for her life on deaf ears and they drowned her. Over and over and over.

So she tried to notice new things. The pewter cup near the stone staircase, the golden shapes of the tiled murals, the skull of a bird hanging from the augur’s neck. She learned the faces of each of Amaril’s murders so carefully she could have drawn them from memory. Sometimes she could have sworn she saw impressions of them in her waking thoughts too.

 _If you want to stop, we can go back to Olympe’s now,_ Nesterin offered after the first week. She was looking for permission to stop trying and to stop drowning. But Amaril surprised her and said:

 _No._ _No, we keep on going._

She sounded different. Firmer and stronger and colder with it too. But the idea of leaving became suddenly unthinkable to Nesterin. Of course, they would keep on going. Drowning and drowning and drowning together.

Cassandra went back to the mountains. Seeing the Chantry under Vivienne's rule had only made her more desperate to return the Seekers to their fullest power. She couldn't promise that her letters would be any good, but she made Nesterin promise that they would stay in touch. 

Vivienne was delighted her Herald was using the circle to sleep in. The best place for a mage in all of Thedas, didn’t Nesterin just prove it? But, of course, Nesterin was free to leave whenever she chose. She could visit her sisters and take her lunches in the city. Vivienne had made good on her threat to commission a portrait of her to hang in the Winter Palace and four times she had gone to the Grand Cathedral to be stared at by an artist and the man had not once picked up a brush yet. It was hardly a perfect case study of life for a mage in the circle.

Most evenings, she made use of the White Spire’s resources. By day, Chancellor Jurgen and her friends at the University were more than happy to grant her access to their libraries and archives. _Probably because of all those rocks and herbs she’d given to them for their research,_ she thought idly. She poured through all that she could find of the area, all of the old maps and mining records and travelogues. There were inventories of artefacts taken for the archaeology department, there were rocks and tusket skeletons and the mummified remnants of creatures long extinct.

One morning, Nesterin made herself very popular by reading an ancient elven tablet aloud to herself when one of the history scholars had shown it to her:

“You’re kidding me, you can read that?” the scholar thundered. “Ninety years and no one’s been able to crack it. There are _thirty seven_ books in the library speculating about what this tablet means! Oh but you must see another, please!”

In the end, thanks to the voices from the Well of Sorrows, she gave more answers than she got in return. But Nesterin liked the university a _great_ deal. Outside, it was all spires and gleaming bronze domes. Inside it was warm and bathed in the yellow glow of many candles. Shabby scholars shuffled down the hall immersed in thought, students debated mathematical quandaries loudly and in depth. The smell of old paper in the library mingled with the scent fresh ink on parchment and she felt quite at home. She began to feel the pangs of regret whenever she had to leave in the evening. Leave and go back to the spire and drown in her dreams all over again. So she stayed later and later each night, reading in the silence of the darkened library, hearing only the sparsest of footfalls and the rustling of mice between the shelves.

“Storm, Steel, Towers, Black,” said one of the scholars one day. She leaned down to get a look at the books Nesterin had in front of her. “Just how far back are you hoping to go?”

“A long, long time if I have to.”

The scholar was a neat little Nevarran woman with braided grey buns and a comfy woollen cardigan thrown over her dress. Funalis was over now, and Val Royeaux had returned, like a brightly coloured bird, to colour and frills and frippery. But inside of the University the scholars still favoured a more muted palette. They wore earthy tones of grey and brown and green. Almost like Dalish colours, Nesterin thought.

“Good luck,” sniffed the scholar, in a manner quite reminiscent of Cassandra. “Any older than the Glory Age and it will have been hoarded away by Tevinter years ago. Those bastards have been hiding their secrets for centuries. Try and tell them about academic freedom and they won’t have it. Honestly, we don’t want the spooky secrets of their magic, we just want to make sense of our collective history!”

It was something she’d been beginning to suspect herself, unfortunately. If she wrote letters and grovelled and begged, Nesterin wondered how far she would get with the scholars in Tevinter. She was a heretic there now, she remembered. For the Chantry of the Black Divine, she was as much a taboo as the canticle of Shartan. Perhaps Dorian could help. She’d been meaning to write to him and, as Iron Bull had intimated on several occasions, a letter from her was quite overdue.

She mused on the subject further over her tea with the Chancellor that afternoon. Jurgen had taken to inviting her to his large office for little sandwiches and rock buns while the last lectures of the day were taking place. Nesterin hated the bread in Orlais- it was artificially whitened for some insane reason, it tasted chalky and claggy and was disconcertingly soft in the mouth- but Jurgen always had a little brandy on hand which made for quite a pleasant hour or so.

He was a Marcher too, educated in Markham before he came to Orlais. He was about fifty now with olive skin and a nose like a beak, his teeth were small and a bit grey, his eyes were very crinkled around the corners but his brown hair had not lost its colour. For a human, he was long and thin with only the hint of a paunch around his middle when he sat down. Along with this, he had an arch, intelligent twinkle in his eye that she had come to appreciate in many of the scholars at the University.

“I’m not a linguist. I studied pure mathematics before I became a glorified bureaucrat,” Jurgen was saying as he poured the brandy. His room was all dark wood and cosily chaotic, with books and papers in piles everywhere. “But Bawn is delighted with you. She said her paper on- oh, what was it now- ‘The Prospect of a Future Participle in Ancient Elven’ is basically down to your translations.”

“Well, I am Dalish, so…”Nesterin shrugged.

“We’ve asked for Dalish help before. The language has been deteriorating and dying for centuries, nobody _really_ understands ancient elvish.”

“No, I suppose not.”

Except, of course, the ancient elf running around Thedas, Nesterin thought. And the voices in her head, obviously.

“ I’m afraid we’ve been butchering your people’s songs and poems for years.Imagine seeing the words: _Here’s ivy!— take them, as I used to do/ Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine./ Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,/And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine._ And realising we’d spent hundreds of years assuming it was gardening advice.”

Nesterin laughed quietly and took a sip of brandy,“You recite poems very prettily for a mathematician, Chancellor Haulis.”

“Do I?” Jurgen made a comically grotesque grimace, “It all sounds agonizingly ugly to me. Give me commutative rings, torsions and the beauty in abstractions any day!”

“Now you’re the one speaking a language nobody understands.”

She took a small piece of bread and put it into her mouth. It wasn’t _that_ bad. Well, no, it was terrible. But she was getting used to it. Just as she had gotten used to her days at the University. Perhaps it was just because her nerves were fraught and her body was tired and her eyes were red and inflamed, but she could have happily curled like a cat into an alcove in the library and simply stayed there forever.

“Would you like to take a research position here?” Jurgen asked her, suddenly, as if reading her mind. “I think you’d like it. And we’d love to have you.”

“ _Oh_ …” said Nesterin faintly. Because she didn’t know what else to say. Her eyes slid sideways and she looked down at her hand. “Because I’m famous?”

“Well, the Chancellor in me _is_ saying that the presence of the Herald of Andraste on my staff certainly would do a lot for the funding of the University,” Jurgen conceded. “But the scholar in me recognises that you have a rare talent for elvish and a great deal of potential.”

It was the voices from the well he really wanted, she reminded herself. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t have liked to have stayed.

Truly, actually, she would have _loved_ to have stayed.

Nesterin pictured herself in the quiet library, surrounded by books. She pictured herself walking across the deep green quad in the summer months and in the spring when the cherry trees were in bloom. She could take a little room amongst the other scholars, she could get a fireplace, she could get a grey cat and take her dinners in the halls of residence with tutors like Jurgen who made jokes about mathematics and poetry.

And then she could wait for her world to die.

“I know it’s not as glamorous or as exciting as the work you’re used to doing,” said Jurgen, reading the way her expression had fallen. “But it’s something I’ve given some thought to. Before she died, Empress Celene gave my predecessor a good spanking about the diversity of the student population and we’ve made good headway since. We could offer you room to learn, colleagues to collaborate with and in return a, good, authentic, source of elven history might one day change the world.”

It all sounded so perfect, but-

_But._

But she’d made a promise in the Crossroads. A damn stupid promise to a liar who cared nothing for promises to begin with. A promise to a man who’d left her for years and still somehow seemed to be every second thought in her head. A promise that she could no more let go of that than she could her own bones, but-

But it seemed so warm in the University.

Warm and quiet and full of books and she _wanted…_ hadn’t dared to think...could easily have....in another world...

But of course she couldn’t.

“Oh dear, that’s very idealistic isn’t it?” Jurgen chuckled as he watched her. He had no idea that her heart was breaking. “Pure maths is all about abstractions but I sometimes go too far with them.”

“No, no. It was very kind of you to offer. I’m...I would love to be able to accept, but…” she trailed off miserably.

“One to think about, perhaps,” Jurgen twinkled. “For when you are old and grey like me. We’re not exactly going anywhere.”

“Yes, thank you, Chancellor.”

“You must call me Jurgen,” he said kindly.

“Thank you, Jurgen. I think I need to go now.”

* * *

 Bull had waited for her outside. She took off wordlessly, quickly as she could and as she did so her thoughts raced too. _must be so fucking dull for Bull, trailing around after the Herald. Must be desperate to go back to his chargers. Drink in taverns. Sing loud songs. Go back to Dorian a little while. Spend the evenings and mornings with him in a little house on the border. Good to leave fucking Orlais behind. No money was worth it. No money was enough to guard somebody who was already dead to begin with._

“Boss,” he called after her. “Fuck, what is it? _Boss_.”

Nesterin managed ten minutes before she clutched her stomach, falling against one of the walls of the university before she sank to the ground.

Deep, horrible, wrenching sobs rolled over and over her, making her whole body tremble. She didn’t know why she was crying. She must have looked so weak. She must have looked deranged.

Blame it on the nights without sleep. Blame it on Amaril and the temple and the constant drowning. Blame it on her bones hurting and her throat hurting and the weight of the world on her shoulders.

She didn’t know why she was crying, she told herself. But she did. _She did_.

“Do I need to kill somebody?” The Iron Bull growled through gritted teeth, eyes darting down the hall towards Jurgen’s office. “What did he _do_ to you?”

Nesterin shook her head. “He offered me a job,” she squeaked. And she bowed her head and started to cry all over again.

She didn’t have the faculties to even begin to explain why such a simple thing had caused her to break down so entirely. But she’d forgotten that it was The Iron Bull she was with.

“Ah, _shit_ ,” he said.

And that was it.

She was understood.

Wiping her tears savagely, Nesterin looked up at the ceiling and breathed. She pulled her knees to her chest and mumbled,“I really wish there was a monster I could fight, Bull. I wish there was darkspawn or a demon or just some dragon to cut down.”

“You don’t say _just_ some dragon, Boss.”

“But it’s not. It’s _people_ . They were supposed to be _my_ people... once. The Dalish, Vivienne, Leliana...Solas,” she buried her face in her hands and said, in a muffled voice. “I’m all alone and no one is listening.”

Above her, the Iron Bull sighed. “Word of advice?” he began and she heard a groan as he manipulated his own massive bag of loosely tied together injuries onto the ground beside her. “You wanna do this, and I mean _really_ wanna do this, then you have got to stop being the Inquisitor.”

“I stopped months ago,” she reminded him. “It’s all gone. All gone into a Chantry bank account or pissed up the river.”

“Yeah, the Inquisition stopped, but _you_ sure as shit didn’t. Listen, no one’s saying you weren’t a good leader- brave as balls and honest and all self-sacrificing and shit. But you’re a free agent now, Boss. You’re Ben-Hassrath dropped into someone else’s organisation with your own agenda going on. And that’s a whole ‘nother fucking skill-set right there.”

She blinked at him.

Ben-Hassrath? Nesterin had never once considered that might be what she was now. Or at least some kind of an equivalent. But when she thought about it she didn’t really have a role in the Chantry, she didn’t believe she was a Herald of anyone for one minute and yet she was still pretending. Pretending and worrying that she wasn’t being given the whole story. Pretending and trying to ignore the fact that Divine Victoria absolutely did not want the same things for Solas that she did.

Fuck. She _was_ Ben-Hassrath. And she was _terrible_ at it.

“No one is listening?” Bull went on. “Well, fuck, of course not. Normal people don’t have marks on their hands and an entire army backing them up. It’s not your way or the highway anymore. You gotta be more subtle now. Why not lie and say you’ve come around to the Chantry side of things? Inform for Leliana, meet with Vivienne, train with the fucking Templars if you have to. Get back in fighting shape and you know...lay off the sauce from time to time. Be a better spy, basically.”

Bull was right, of course. She _had_ been doing it all wrong. Hoping if she just _said_ that she wanted to save Solas enough times that people would get on board with her and let her be in charge.

“I was a truly awful spy the last time I tried it,” she confessed with a watery laugh. “I got caught right away. I did the complete opposite of blending in and then a church blew up around me.”

“Yeah, you’re gonna find it really hard,” admitted Bull, probably without having to employ too many of his superior skills of perception.

But she’d been told she would have to lead people almost her entire life, she went from studying under Deshanna and preparing to lead a clan right into leading an organization. She had literally no frame of reference for any kind of alternative.

“But you’ll do it,” Bull told her. “Because you won’t give yourself any choice. And I’ll help you, Boss.”

“Not Boss,” she corrected. “Right? I thought under the Qun your name is what you are. If I’m not a boss you then can’t call me that.”

“I mean you’re still paying me and we’re not under the Qun,” The Iron Bull pointed out. “But fine” he paused for a moment to consider before he offered: “...what about Shokrakar? It’s the complete opposite of Boss.”

“What does it mean?”

He gave a small grin and he nudged her.

“It means rebel.”

* * *

 The painter was a heavily bearded shabby looking Antivan named Zurbara. He worked a lot with the chantry and his specific vision for Nesterin’s portrait went like this:

The Herald stands before the viewer on a boundary. Her left is green, and lush and wild, her right is of stone and gold. The Dales and the Chantry, yes? The dark woods of ignorance and the light of Andraste’s grace. I will _not_ have her in armour. Mail is ugly, blocky, it hides the body. You ask me to paint a woman, I paint a woman. _Teeny_ , _tiny_ woman, like small boy-  but I will do what I can.  I will put her in white, and garlands here and here. You still want I do the sword? Hunff...yes, but low and loose. At the side, not held high. The hair goes like so, out and big and near the face, over the ears, I think. She tilts her head upwards, towards the right. Such devotion in the face, _ah_. Yes? No. No, more like _ah,_ you know? Ah, _ah_ like so. She is listening to Andraste...

 _Hard to listen to anything with all my hair in front of my knife-ears,_ thought Nesterin darkly as the painter manipulated her arms and her face into his specific requirements.

But she didn’t say it. In fact, she was going to say as little as possible. Nesterin had resolved to pose perfectly. Pose and pout and be completely compliant because, like Bull said, she was a spy now. An agent of herself.

For the painting, Zurbara had turned an unused room in the Cathedral into a makeshift studio. There wasn’t much to look at, just bare walls and Zurbara’s desk and his easel and his oil paints. He had yellow and brown pigments on his hands and arms and in his red beard constantly and watery blue eyes that Nesterin didn’t like. He made her think - painfully- of Solas painting in the rotunda, of how neatly and precisely he worked, barely a mark of paint on him- even when he smeared great washes of plaster across the walls.

She smelled the tallow candles and the wash of the paint and the hair of the brushes and she desperately missed the smell of Solas. She hadn’t wanted to think about him at all since her terrible meeting with Jurgen, but he came to her. Always, _always_ , he came into her memory.

 _I would have taken the job,_ Amaril told her. Perhaps she thought she was helping.

_Just so you know, you’re not helping._

_It’s because of me you were even offered the job,_ she whispered darkly. _You’ll regret these things. You’ll regret not living enough after he kills you._

_Stop it!_

_You can listen to Bull and play Ben-Hassrath all you like but you already know. You know the slow arrow’s already in the air. You know you’re the first knight and that the only way out is a rock in your skull._

“Stop it!” Nesterin shrieked. From his place at his easel, Zurbara looked up and frowned at her. As did the two Chantry sisters Vivienne had asked to keep an eye on the proceedings. So much for being compliant and not standing out.

“I want to take a break,” she said, trying to recover. “Please, could you find me a drink?” she asked one of the sisters. Yes, Bull had told her to lay off the sauce but that didn’t mean _stop_. Especially not when her head was pounding and the only thing to stop the pain and clear her head was a little alcohol.

“And me also. Make it a mead if you can. Orlesian wine is horse piss compared to the Antivan stuff,” added Zurbara nodding sagely.

 _I’m sorry, Nesterin, I’m so sorry,_ she heard Amaril whisper to her desperately. _I don’t know why I said that. Something feels angry in me. I never wanted to die. I want to kill everyone who killed me, but they’re all so long gone._

Amaril’s pleading came coupled with a stabbing pain in her head. Nesterin bent forward and pinched her temples. _It’s alright,_ Nesterin reassured her. _No more White Spire for us, I think. We both need a few nights of peace._

_No. No. It’s not that.  We can keep going._

_But it’s torture for both of us, Amaril._

_Honestly, I’ll be fine.  It’s working. I think I’m on the brink of remembering something, I swear it. So close. If we stop now, everything will be a waste._

Nesterin sighed and pushed out a rattling breath. The pressure above her eyeballs felt enormous, but breathing slowly and deeply helped it to subside a little. Looking up, she saw that Zurbara was staring at her. In all honesty, she had quite forgotten he was there.

“That is a good face. Lots of pain. You would make a good martyr, I think,” he said, nodding, raking his watery blue eyes across her face.

“Pardon?”

“You would be a pretty model for some sort of burning or shooting or stabbing scene. Suffering looks well on you.”

That made Nesterin bark out a bitter laugh. “That explains a lot,” she said.

The door opened then and it was just soon enough. She desperately needed some alcohol to help with the pain in her head. But instead of the Chantry sisters, an elf walked through the door. Shrouded in the shadows of a spy, she panted slightly as if she had run all the way here.

“Good. I found you,” she said. “Sister Leliana said to fetch you at once. She’s finally ready to talk, but she said she’ll only talk to you.”

“Who will?” frowned Nesterin.

“The prisoner of course,” said the spy with darting eyes, she looked slightly nonplussed that Nesterin had no idea who she was talking about. “The agent of Fen’Harel. She only ever said her name. It’s Revekah”


	24. A Prison Guard's Report

_From the notes of Sister Isidora Lamberty:_

_Day 1-_

The prisoner is volatile. She tried to bite Sister Valentine. Apart from profanity, nothing else is coming from her lips.

Hopefully, the effects we took from her are more illuminating than the woman is at present. They are, as follows:

Seventeen copper pieces.

Two white buttons.

A small shard of red clay. Possibly from a pot.

A pink handkerchief.

A small dagger.

A broken whistle

Two stale biscuits.

If I might be so bold as to offer my own humble opinion to an expert spymaster, this is an unusually small amount of effects to find upon a person. Unusually small and strikingly inconsequential.  

Her left hand is very badly damaged and almost black. The circle mage who came to look at it finds no trace of the magic you asked her to look for. She will give you her own report most likely, but the guess is mere frostbite. Frostbite from a mage perhaps, or from extreme cold. We will try to deduce it.

As per your request, we are watching the prisoner constantly through night and day. For tonight, a few good men and a few good prods should prevent her from sleeping. But I will devise other methods of keeping her awake should you intend to hold her much longer.

_Day 2-_

Long night with the prisoner. The woman was extremely agitated when our intentions to prevent her from sleeping became clear. We informed her that her cooperation was required and that sleep was a luxury she had yet to earn.

Magebane has been administered. We will need a steady supply to keep the men from suffering electric shocks. I hear that the Qunari sew the lips of their mages shut or put out their tongues. Is it effective at limiting casting ability, I wonder? It would at least save  Sister Valentine from hearing her poor dead mother’s soul cursed so violently.

Though, I suppose, it would prevent her from confessing.

Tranquils speak freely, though, don’t they?

_Day 3-_

The prisoner is becoming somewhat stupid and slow. Her responses have weakened and she shows evidence of delusional behaviours. She speaks of a fly buzzing in her ear. One that is trying to kill her and that she must catch and kill at once. If there is a fly, none of us has heard it or seen it.

Sleep deprivation alone has so far been proving an ineffective method of extraction but in the small hours of last night, there was a breakthrough.

Unfortunately, the soldier on the night shift who heard her information was not particularly literate. He roughly transcribed the events but I had to rely chiefly on his testimony:

At 4 am, she implied that she was from the mountains. She begged to be allowed to sleep and promised in return that she would “fuck him like her father”. Apologies for the coarse language, Sister, but the prisoner is consistently profane. If the elves think that they were once noble, then this specimen is a terrible indictment of her breed.

I believe other methods of extracting information from her are required. They should be employed before the lack of sleep drives her inevitably mad.

_Day 4-_

As I feared, the prisoner has begun to exhibit yet more signs of delusions, of paranoia and hallucination. She speaks now in snatches of elvish. The translator you provided us claims that she speaks in a pidgin language that he is unfamiliar with. He offers the theory that if she is a Dalish, it is a crude and primitive clan quite unlike those that he knows.

I did not think there could be people more crude and primitive than the Dalish. I asked if she could be a city elf and the translator agreed it was possible. One who learned the elven language poorly.

He took all that he could from her words and then he said that he hoped she was neither Dalish nor city elf. 

We administered hot coals to the feet of the prisoner.  She only wept.

Possibly the weeping is positive? Possibly we are beginning to break her down. Possibly she has broken already.

Once again, I must recommend the employment of tranquillity. It would stop the biting. It would stop the hallucinating. It would stop the weeping.

_Day 5-_

The prisoner says she will talk. If the Herald of Andraste can be brought to her.

Such things are surely unthinkable? The Lady Herald is a pure creature, bathed in the light of Andraste’s grace. Should we really subject her to the rantings of a mad whore? Is it to confess her sins at the font of Andraste's speaker on earth? Or will she spit in her face and further desecrate the Chant of Light?

I defer to your judgement, of course, but I have begun to believe that this woman is of little consequence. She speaks elvish so poorly that I must assume, were she an agent of Fen’Harel, she is only a misguided fanatic from the alienages.

And- if you would permit me to speculate- she speaks so brazenly and behaves so wildly that I half think she knows she is dead already.


	25. Au secours

There was a profound darkness to the cells below The Grand Cathedral. The sort of darkness that the light of a few weak yellow candles did little to extinguish. It lurked in the corners and lengthened under heavy wooden doors, it carried with it the heavy weight of death or decay or of being forgotten. It was a darkness that seemed to belong with Shartan or Ameridan, or any other person the chantry had decided to erase from history.

Nesterin took in the dull gleam of chains, she took in the dried blood in the corner of Revekah’s mouth. At Haven she’d often wondered why chantry churches needed prisons. Back then she had been the one kneeling and cuffed. Once, she’d been the wild elf girl they wrote reports about too. The one the people had wanted to string up by the neck for her apparent crimes against the chantry.

“You wanted to speak to me?” Nesterin asked.

Revekah’s head lolled weakly on her neck and her eyes slid lazily over Nesterin. They were barely open, barely seeing, like the glassy eyes of a corpse. After five nights under the Grand Cathedral, Revekah seemed to have more spirit about her than person. She seemed more of the fade than of the solid world. Hunched into a corner, her pale, cracked and broken form seemed barely corporeal. There was something wisp-like in the glistening white of her face. Even her red hair, once so wild and fiery was chopped short and seemed to have burned out into nothing but embers. 

“You were right to do that,” Nesterin continued in a low voice, now speaking in elvish. Two years with the voices from the well speaking to her constantly had done wonders for her fluidity but she spoke slowly. She paused to let the voices fill in the phrasing for her, and so that Revekah might understand. “I’m the best chance you have of surviving this place.”

Revekah’s tired eyes narrowed as they slid carefully towards the door. It was guarded by a Templar. Leliana and the Chantry Sisters were on the other side of it. Revekah chuckled weakly.

“You learned better to play cards games since our last,” she declared, speaking broken elvish in a broken voice.

“You lost your team-mate,” Nesterin returned, thinking of the blonde, Leanne, who had worked with Revekah to beat Nesterin’s hand at Wicked Grace, “But I can protect you from the quick children if you help me.”

She got another chuckle for that. As she shifted her wrists in her bindings, Nesterin caught flashes of deep welts, and cuts and bruises on Revekah’s white skin.

“I must have sleep,” Revekah croaked, sounding suddenly desperate. “Strange sounds come in the night. Lights come into my head.”

“They won't risk it. They know the Dread Wolf’s tricks,” Nesterin said, indicating to the door. “He talks to his agents in the beyond places. ”

“Elvhen can fuck in beyond places too,” barked Revekah. “Have you ever tried it?”

Nesterin pursed her lips into a thin line and fought not to sigh. The other woman worked alarmingly hard to throw off any sympathy that Nesterin attempted to have for her.

She did not think at all about the dream of Haven. She did not think about the dance she and Solas shared as she was dying. She did not think of finding him in dreams, of the shadows of the memories he showed her, of the fluid air moving around her body and fluttering over her skin like silk.

“If you help me, I will have them give you something,” Nesterin said cooly. “It will be a dreamless sleep, but at least you won’t die.”

Bored, Revekah brewed a bubble of spit in her mouth and sent it spilling out onto the floor.

“Your body is shutting down,” Nesterin told her, trying to stay impassive, but failing to keep a cold bite from her words. “The sounds and the lights come first. But that’s only the start of the madness. And then you’ll die.”

That certainly grabbed Revekah’s attention. She shifted slightly, groaning and creaking as if she were an elderly woman.

“Good. Now, tell me where you came from,” Nesterin demanded.

“The Free Marches. As you. I gave you this answer on the journey from Skyhold.”

“I read the report. You told one of the guards you were from the mountains.”

“The Free Marches has mountains, idiot. Not that you will know of these things. Your young life is pretty and green dales, I bet. In the sun. You fatten yourself on halla milk and children’s stories. Only a meek, weak, fatted halla calf opens her mouth and suckles at the quick children tit like you do,” Revekah spat on the floor again.

“Did you ask me here just to sit and insult me?” Nesterin folded her arms, “Out there, they are just _dying_ to make you a tranquil, Revekah. The idea is that you’ll be more pliant afterwards.”

“You’d never be able to do it.”

“You know nothing about me,” Nesterin said firmly in a low, heavy voice.

Pale eyes met hers as Revekah started up at her. They were bloodshot and the irises trembled slightly in the sockets. A pain travelled across Nesterin’s forehead as she heard whispers from the Well of Sorrows grow stronger:

 _Blessed child_ …. _we kneel in the chamber...I meditated on the question_ ... _It’s bleeding on the floor….the dog is dying...second and seconds...the earth trembles….how dare you question my loyalty...there are promises that are not so easily broken...this is the executor….the memories were not taken by her….don’t kill me, DON’T KILL ME. DON’T KILL ME._

Until Amaril said, firmly:

_Enough!_

And the voices settled back into the hum of indecipherable whispers. Nesterin was left rubbing her skull as the memories of the overwhelming pressure left a white-hot imprint of pain.

“I know you are just a weak whisper from an old water,” cackled the red-head. “You are not even a person anymore. How dare you make a threat to take me away from myself?”

“I’ll do so much more than threaten,” said Nesterin. She stood up and went to the heavy door, ready to call the Chantry Sisters.

“Wait! _Wait_ …” Revekah said desperately, reaching out to her.

The bluff worked easily enough. Nesterin’s stomach hurt. She hated all these metaphors about cards and chess and games. She didn’t see a hand of serpents, just a girl who knew too well what could happen to her now that she was on the wrong side of the Chantry.

 _“_ The sister, Isidora, doesn't think you're Dalish. But I don't think you came from an alienage either,” said Nesterin.

“You want ask me if I was born before Arlathan fell?”

Just the mangling of the sentence made Nesterin doubt it.

“Were you?” Nesterin asked, still.

“No. My mortal body is ageing and dying and diminished... just like yours.”

Revekah, Nesterin thought, was the very definition of a quick child. So pale and so thin. Ephemeral and ethereal. Dying by the second. Just like the creature that Nesterin saw in her glass each day, unmarked, bare and barely a person.

 _A whisper from old water_ , Revekah said. She wasn’t exactly wrong. Nesterin felt, sometimes, deep in her bones that she already belonged to the Well of Sorrows. Those days, only the thought of the world ending and the thought of her promise kept her animated. Like a hollow, broken marionette. 

“How did you become an agent of Fen’Harel?” Nesterin demanded.

“I was given instructions,” Revekah shrugged, maddingly, “I followed them. That’s all.”

“What instructions were you given?”

“Go to Skyhold. I did that. Meet with another agent. I did that. Leanne. Watch for the Qunari spies and report back. I did that. Then I went home to the Free Marches.”

It was nothing that Nesterin didn’t know already, and she didn’t believe a damn word of it. Not when Revekah’s mouth was slowly curving upwards into another a smile.

“What happened to your arm?” Nesterin demanded. Revekah folded her blackened, frostbitten arm into the folds of her shirts. 

“I burned it on the stove.”

“You’re lying,” Nesterin snarled.

“Yes. I am,” Revekah admitted mildly. “It’s easy. You say the words and you reshape someone’s whole reality. I _love_ lying.”

“You won’t get any rewards for protecting him, Revekah,” said Nesterin, veering dangerously on desperation now. “You’re a mortal. You’ll burn and die like the rest of us.”

“The sweet sacrifice of duty,” said Revekah again, just as she had done in the alleyway.

“You’re insane.”

Revekah started laughing then. Not a weak chuckle but a loud, startling cackle that reminded Nesterin of the first time she’d laughed at her, spitting out blood as it trickled from her nose and into her mouth.

“It runs in my family,” said Revekah through her cackling. “My insanity is inevitable. My death is inevitable.”

“Nothing is inevitable...And your accent is atrocious.”

* * *

“She needs sleep,” said Nesterin, switching back to common when she was on the other side of the door. Before Leliana or the Chantry Sisters could interject, she added quickly. “I can prepare a draught that will make her sleep dreamless.”

Leliana nodded. She knew that the old Inquisitor had years of experience brewing and experimenting with sleeping draughts. Since Solas had left. Their effects, their side-effects, their efficacy and strength were now an area of expertise for Nesterin.

“What did she say to you?” asked Leliana.

And here, Nesterin had to choose. Between a lie or the truth. The Iron Bull’s pep talk was still heavy on her mind and she knew what Ben-Hassrath would do:

“Revekah just confirmed my suspicions. About Mythal’s orb. He is searching for it.”

But Leliana was too good a spymaster to simply take Nesterin’s lie at face value. Fortunately however, her mistrust seemed more aimed at Revekah,

“Why would she do that? After days of nothing, she give us this?”

“Exhaustion,” Nesterin supplied quickly “She begged for sleep. Said there were lights and colours in her head. I told her she would likely die after a day or two of the same and her tongue loosened up quite quickly.”

Leliana sniffed. Nesterin had no way of knowing whether she was convinced or not, but she had to press on.

“As you know, I’ve been searching too, at the university and the white spire. But if I had more help the job would be faster. Chantry sisters. Access to the chantry records. Perhaps even a few Templar scouting parties?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Leliana agreed.

“And we need to open up talks with Tevinter.”

“The Divine cannot do this openly,” Leliana asserted. Nesterin opened her mouth to argue that the fate of the world was bigger than two factions of the same religion disputing over dogma, that it transcended nation or race or creed, but Leliana interrupted her, “But I will use my connections in the underworld to see what I can do.”

It wasn’t nothing, Nesterin conceded. Those connections had served the Inquisition well over the years. It was further than she’d gotten months. Lying, apparently, had its benefits.

“Did you read that she was given magebane?” Leliana asked her then. “Did you ask her if her ability came before or after the others?”

“She was always a mage,” said Nesterin, not sure one way or the other, but sure that her answer would look better for her people. “Many elves have a latent ability.”

“That was not what you said in your letter,” Leliana pointed out. Keeping the weight of the secret of the new powers of the elves was still weighing heavily on her, it seemed.

“I know, but we need more-”

“More time. I know,” said Leliana bitterly. “But sooner or later people will know. Not all of the elves who came into magic went into hiding. How long before there is trouble in the alienages? Gaspard and Divine Victoria would not be best pleased if there was an uprising in their own backyard.”

“I’m sure that it would never come to that.”

“How can you be? You are Dalish. Your people are more than happy to avoid the humans, but what do you know of the city elves?”

“I'm certain it won’t come to that,” Nesterin repeated.

Apparently now she had started lying to her friends she couldn't stop.

* * *

 Nesterin had to drink that night. Her head hurt too much not to. The voices whispered and whispered and whispered as they always did, but it bothered her more than usual. Perhaps it was because they were louder in the Spire. Perhaps it was because they were not loud _enough_. What did they whisper when she only caught snatches? What did they say between themselves? What were these memories and pockets of knowledge that lay just out of her reach?

 _I can help you sleep,_ said Amaril. _If you would like me to._

_How?_

_I can soothe you. I can take the pain away from your head for a little while. If you let me. If you consent to it._

_I don’t know if that’s a good idea…._ Nesterin thought, trailing, drifting, feeling oddly heavy.

A wave of lethargy flooded over her like sweet, sticky syrup. Her hand on the wineglass became loose, she lost control of her fingers and the glass slip, slipped onto the floor. Glass smashed into thousands of shards, as the red wine spilled onto wood.

Red wine. Wood. Blood. Stone.

The world grew dark. But not before she saw lights and heard whispers. Not before vague images and smells flooded up her memory:

_The petitioner’s chamber is dark. There’s blood upon the floor. The wolf lies flat on the stone, great and black and heaving. His fur glistens with deep, drying blood. He snarls as he breathes, eyes snapped shut and teeth bared. Bared teeth. Big and sharp and white._


	26. A Dream of Amaril (2)

I remember. In flashes of colour and smell and sound, I remember. So vividly I could be living it again.

So vividly _I_ could be _living_ again.

Blood and stones. Dark stones and yellow light. Black fur, white teeth and thickening rich red blood.

I only left my room because I couldn't sleep.

Little yellow weed growing ill and pale in the temple…

No, just a _house_. Temple came later. The summer house, it’s called now. A place of retreat turned into a place of loneliness and waiting and wasting. It’s never summer here. The earth trembles around us, the mountains belch black smoke and the air tastes like ash in our throats. The sky has been dark and red like blood for years and years and years. We do not remember the sun.

And there are wolves howling somewhere near the high walls that keep us closed in.

I only left my room because I couldn’t sleep.

In the courtyard, the plants are dying. They are ill and pale and yellow, or black and charred and dried up. Across the stones and dead plants, I hear a sound of rushing footsteps from the hall. Someone lights a dim candle, then someone lights another. There’s murmuring voices, a burst of laughter and then a growl. It’s more life than I’ve heard in this place for months. I know I’ll be in trouble if I’m caught out of bed but I go towards the voices.

I don’t remember why I went towards the voices. Perhaps I was once the girl who went willingly towards unknown and unfamiliar sounds? A brave and curious and living girl. Perhaps that was what I was like.

And what do the voices say? _Shit._ It’s murky and muffled and so far out of my reach.

Something about blood?

Remember Amaril. You _have_ to remember.

This is your life. It’s all that’s left. No one else will remember it for you. The rest of the world happily let your light slip quietly into darkness more than a millennium ago.

“No. no. Blood all over my floors,” she groans. The Hearthkeeper...no, _Housekeeper_.

Hearthkeeper came later. When there was a hearth that needed keeping. After the red sky faded and the earth stopped shaking.

But, for now, she only minds the house.

Usually, she is neat and pretty and ample, dressed in a blue robe with long brown hair trailing down her back. Tonight she seems dishevelled.

She will die here.

Not twenty paces from where she stands now. In a few hundred years her robes will be soaked black with her blood. Her agonised face will be twisted into the pale horror of rigor mortis. _Not now_ . _Not now._ Tonight she’s been pulled out of bed. Tonight she’s alive,  her hair twisted into several braids. She carries a candle in one hand and runs the other frantically over her face.

“You need to get it out of here before anyone sees. _Please_ ,” she begs them.

Alongside the Housekeeper, there are three people in the Petitioner’s Chamber. Three people and one spirit, dressed head to tip in ephemeral silvery armour. They stand bedraggled and dripping filth, surrounding a large shabby mound on the floor.

In the dark, I think it’s coats.

“I’m going to see if I can get a bath. Do you remember bathing?” says one of the people to his friends. Or something like that. Something funny and swaggering that makes the red sky and the trembling earth seem like nothing but an amusing dream that will pass into nothing by morning.

He’s strong and tall with a square face and long pale red hair. (I remember that because it almost looked pink, and I had never seen that colour on a person before). He has it pulled up. A knot, I think. And it’s limp and unwashed and streaked with dirt and grime. He has freckles...a constellation of freckles...a whole sky of stars and freckles...freckles like dots to connect….and they are familiar freckles...if only I had a way to connect them….

His uniform, face, boots and hands are smeared with mud.

So are the other two people.

They look as if they crawled up from out of the earth like the little yellow flowers in the courtyard.

“Distantly,” sighs another. A woman. She must have been a woman.

Covered with mud, she seems like a strange and wild thing. Her hair is long and she has coarse curls the colour of ravens trailing down her back. Her pale blue eyes are too big for her narrow face and the dark mud on her skin makes them stand out strikingly “I feel like I’ve started to _sweat_ dirt.”

“Why did you have to bring it in the hall?” the Hearthkeeper... _House_ keeper…. goes on saying anguished, “ _F-something-an_ , why?”

She implores the last of the people, another tall young elf barely distinguishable underneath mud. The light from the Housekeeper’s candle moves over him as she turns to speak and I see that there is blood drying black on his hands, smeared across his chin and soaked into his sleeves.

The blood-smell of them is slightly hazy. Their faces too, are slightly hazy. The woman’s mark changes. Mythal, Elgar’nan, Andruil? Who was she marked for? I just remember that there was black ink underneath her wild, muddy face.

_F-something-an...that’s not right. That’s not a name._

Between them, the mound of fur coats heaves sharply. I draw in closer and realise that it’s _moving_. Heaving, actually. Heaving and moving and snarling.

“We’re at war,” says the muddy, bloody elf. “Look at the state of him. We can’t go back to Tarem’An like this. Mythal won’t be here for years and we only need hours. Days at the most.”

“You’ve deserted,” says the Housekeeper, looking sick.

“Not deserted. We took a vote and we tactically removed ourselves from the situation,” says the one with pale red hair, grinning.

“Not unanimously,” the spirit adds staunchly. It’s face is covered by a helmet, but the voice that comes from it is not muffled. The armour is not armour, I realise. It is as much a part of its shape as the rest of it. “Two against three. We should have stayed and fought and died if that’s what it took.”

“You talk a good game about dying for one who keeps choosing not to take a physical body, Valour,” laughs the wild dark-haired woman. Or is that really what she said? She offended the spirit, I know that much because it returns sharply:

“I can _inspire_ like this. I would take a body if it were the best for our men. I would not hesitate. But bodies mean fear….a body means corruption of my purpose…”

“And dirt _this_ far up your jacksy….”  

The Housekeeper groans, “I’ll be cast out for this. I’ll be executed for helping you.”

“No one’s being executed,” says the one with bloody hands, he touches her reassuringly on her shoulder and gestures down to the heaving mound. “This is the pride of Elgar’nan.”

“And the bane of Mythal’s floors,” sniffs the Housekeeper. “That dog is dying.”

It’s a _wolf_. I realise.

It’s _The_ Wolf.

He howls outside the temple at the white twin moons. He howls in a hundred years, a thousand years. These days, we trespass through the same dreams and I do my best to hide from him. To think...I didn’t remember….

I see his black fur, his white teeth and thickening rich red blood. His breath is heavy, his chest lurches uncomfortably. The dog is _dying_.

“It certainly seems like it doesn’t it?” says the young elf quite cheerfully. _F-something-an_ , is his name. But that isn’t a name. “Like most on the front, he was utterly determined to kill himself.”

“While you sit safely in your halls, we dogs have turned dying into an art form,” says the wild-eyeded woman, the redheaded man laughs in a loud high voice at this, and he says:

“I like that. Dying dogs. Dogs of death. Bloody Bastard Dogs of Death.”

Or something like that.

And he slaps his muddy, bloody knee with mirth.

“You should excuse my friends,” says the one the Housekeeper addressed by The-Name-I-Don’t-Remember. “They haven’t seen the sun for three years. Frankly, I'm beginning to suspect they’ve all gone insane-”

“- I resent any assumption that I was ever sane, Felassan,” says the woman with a wry smile.

_That was it. I remembered his name!!_

“The Sergeant is usually the one who keeps them in line, but since he’s currently _dying_ on your nice clean floor….” says Felassan, Felassan, _Felassan_ and he gestures to the floor.

To the wolf. To the pile of black furs caked with blood. To the sharp teeth and the lurching chest.

But my memory feels now more like smoke than the tangible feel of blood and dirt and sweat and armour. The wolf on the floor twists his shape.

Black fur becomes skin tinted a sickly shade of green, snarling teeth becomes a mouth gritted with pain. He’s pale and he’s young, smeared with dirt and sweat, lying on a gurney. There are bruises darkening his flesh and deep wounds in his side, his leg and his chest. The dog _is_ dying.

 _Help him,_ says a voice in my head. It seems to echo through the Petitioner’s Chamber. It could have been loud enough to shake the earth and churn up the sea and boil the mountains until they spit out fire.

 _I didn’t and I won’t,_ I tell the voice firmly.

She needs to stay out of my memories. She’s alive and she’s so much stronger than the flimsy shapes I can conjure now. If she’s not careful she’ll send the whole thing tumbling down.

She _loves_ the dog on the floor and the sharp clench of her pain is distracting. She bleeds into me in moments of weakness and I sometimes wonder where she ends and I begin.

I sometimes wonder if I have begun at all.

And then I remind myself that I am _only_ an ending. A ghost with no form, no possibilities, no mind and no soul. I am just the whispers of old dead memories.

“I’ll send someone to take a look,” says the Housekeeper. I force myself to look at her. I didn’t go to the wolf. I didn’t touch his face or run my fingers along his jaw. I didn’t marvel at his youth because I didn’t know him old. Because I died, I died, _I died_.

“And I’ll see that you can get your baths,” the Housekeeper finishes.

“Thank you,” says Felassan, leaning forwards to plant a swift kiss on her cheek.

“But...don’t be obvious,” warns the Housekeeper. “Or make complete nuisances of yourselves. I don’t want everyone knowing you’re here and that I let you in without permission.”

“Does that start with the child who’s listening to us behind the window?” asks the wild-eyed woman.

She’s talking about me, I realise. Perhaps I breathed too loudly. Perhaps the dogs of death caught my scent on the wind, plucking it out of the heavy stench of ash and earth and blood. They all turn to look at me.

And that’s when I turn and flee.


	27. En ton coeur brûlera

Grey flakes of ash drifted up from the burning towers of corpses below the ramparts on the Exalted Plains. Nesterin tasted her own blood, mingled with the thick scent of charred flesh as she leaned forwards against her knees. Melee fighting had still been new to her then and she’d taken a bad swipe from behind, care of  a Freeman soldier in the fight for the Eastern Ramparts.

Her back felt hot and wet and raw but she preferred to focus on the pain and not on the landscape. Smoke rose up from across the wide, dead plains. Spiked wooden structures jutted out like fractured jawbones and there were corpses roasting in bright white sun. An ice cold sensation spread out over her skin and Nesterin hissed sharply.

“Always assess your environment before engaging. Focus is seldom an advantage when the enemy surrounds you.”

As usual, Solas’ healing magic came with a scolding, but this time Nesterin could barely hear it. The blood on her fingers glistened like water in sunlight. There were so many bodies. Like pebbles. Spread out all across the plains. Only the armour kept its shape, the people inside were twisted, shrivelled, gnawed at, broken. Piled on mass, they barely looked like people at all.

She gritted her teeth and knew that she was trembling. Taking a deep breath, she made to steady herself. She tried to think of other things. A hot bath, perhaps. Felasera. A chair by the fireplace and a good book to read. But she could see faces in the fire; open mouths contorted with pain and hollowed out eyes being licked at by the flames.

His hand fell over hers, warm, with the lingering pulse of stray magical energy. Solas gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze before swiftly pulling away from her.

“The wound is not deep,” he continued, “You did well. Recovered smoothly. Kept fighting. _That_ was your focus coming to your advantage.”

“I don’t….” Nesterin laughed bitterly but caught herself. If she said she didn’t care about her safety, she would get another scolding. Drawing her head up, she gestured with a bloody hand to the surroundings, “So this is a war, is it?”

Solas blinked at her.

“A civil war, yes,” he replied slowly, probably imagining that she had failed to grasp the politics of it. “The Freemen reject the authority of Orlais and now they want the Dales for themselves. Honestly, the appeal of this old spit of dried earth is a mystery to me.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Solas,” Nesterin said. He laughed a little, bringing his hand to rest at her waist and help her up. As he did so, he pressed against the letters, tucked into her clothing.

The rustle of paper against her skin  reminded Nesterin of their presence. She pulled them out of her jacket, frantically checking the pages for blood or marks or rips and sighed with relief to find them crumpled and sweaty, but generally intact.

“My dearest Aiglentine, I’m not sure if this letter will reach home before I do…” Solas read over her shoulder, and Nesterin folded them up quickly so he couldn't continue.

“They’re not for us.”

“The letters from the dead soldiers,” Solas all but groaned at the realisation. “Sergeant Meursault meant for you to charge a scout with finding them. Not for you to collect them personally. I don’t know why this always needs repeating but you are the _Inquisitor_ . You have _people_ for this sort of thing.”

“I wanted to do it,” Nesterin bit back. “Especially in this place. I think this whole mess would be over a lot sooner if Empress Celene and Gaspard and that ridiculously dressed spellbinder back there started handling a few more dead soldier’s letters. I don’t _understand_ this war,” she spat bitterly.

“Really? And yet your people fetishize the previous wars fought over the very land beneath your feet,” Solas returned drily.

“That’s not-”

“War is war. It ever was. It never changes, It is a wound that never heals and never scars. Not in thousands of years.”

She’d once thought his haunted look, cast out over the ramparts was for the soldiers who were dying for Orlais. Or possibly for the elves who had come before, who’d fought for their freedom and tasted the bitter sting of defeat.

But perhaps not.

“And yet your history books and stories of brave knights are always written in ink and not blood,” he finished, as if he were accusing her of something.

“For a minute there, you sounded more like a grizzled General than Blackwall,” Nesterin smiled.

And then she frowned. She tried to think of battles Solas could have possibly fought in over the last twenty years or so. But Deshanna’s lessons were not much concerned with anything past the Steel Age, and though Josephine had worked her hardest to fill in the gaps, her modern history was far behind her knowledge of the distant past.

“The fade is full of battles,” he returned, lying as smoothly as he always did. “They all look the same.”

And then Nesterin’s memory shifted. To their final meeting at the Crossroads. To the pain in her arm. To the pain in her throat with each agonising scream. To the pain in her heart that burned more than either of them.

“It started with a war…” he’d told her.

But she’d not imagined his war to be so like the ones she’d seen.  And him so young. And the people around him so full of bravado and swagger and so dirty and bleeding. She’d always pictured the time of the elvhen as so sterile and white and clean.

But Amaril’s vision seemed as real as standing on the ramparts of the Exalted Plains. She could almost smell the mud and the sweat on their bodies….

 _Less of that, thank you. I'll have you know, I made a real effort to keep clean,_ Nesterin heard Amaril mutter.

Slowly, Nesterin became more aware of the hard bed underneath her body. She became more aware of the thin slice of light streaming in through a narrow window and the white stone walls of a stone room. She became more aware of her own body, smaller and thinner than Amaril’s, and the weight of her own curls against her face.

But the scent of blood still seemed to linger.

 _Do you remember what happened next?_ Nesterin begged the voice in her head. _Did you see what happened to him?_

 _I’m going to assume that he didn’t die. And they didn't kill me for listening._ Amaril returned flatly. But that wasn’t enough.

Pulling herself out of bed, Nesterin began to dress herself frantically. She made a list of things she would need from the mages in the White Spire for the draught she required.

 _What for?_ asked Amaril.

 _To go back to sleep,_ came Nesterin’s reply.

 _Tch. You think it’s as easy as all that?_ _Because it’s not._

 _You never told me you’d met him. Not once. Not once since I drank from the well. He was there, in real life, right in front of you. And  you kept the truth from me,_ Nesterin accused.

 _A year ago I was just another voice, indistinguishable from all the others,_ Amaril snapped back. _I have to fight just to be heard and to feel my own existence. You can’t expect me to remember every detail all at once. It’s taking everything I have just to exist inside of you._

Elfroot and spindleweed would be easy enough to come by, Nesterin figured. And hopefully none of the mages would ask too many questions as to why she needed it.

 _No,_ Amaril growled. _You’re forcing yourself into_ **_my_ ** _memories. At least have the courtesy of waiting until I’m good and ready._

 _You were the one who told us to keep going,_ Nesterin countered. _You can’t be afraid of what we find now._

Nesterin couldn’t wait. Amaril’s memories were only the smallest scraps of knowledge, but they left her ravenous for more. Even dying over and over of drowning was almost addictive because, as perverse as it sounded, she felt close to something like answers.

And for a chance to see his eyes? Even if it was only in a memory, there was very little that she was not prepared to do for that.

A ripple of pain pulsed across her head. Nesterin knew it was Amaril. She was stronger in the White Spire and they both knew it. But Nesterin curled up her fist and began lacing up her boots. It was still her body, and what Nesterin did with it was not up for negotiation.

But before she could leave, Nesterin was surprised by a rap against the door to her room.

She was even more surprised to find Cullen on the other side of it, dressed in familiar furs, but wearing leather instead of armour.

Nesterin half expected him to begin doling out brusque information about a new bridge or quarry, but he looked even more startled to see her than she did.

“Cullen. This is unexpected” she admitted. It had been more than a month since she had seen him at the ball. She’d made arrangements with Olympe in the days following to donate an appropriate amount of money to Cullen’s Templar sanctuary and had assumed that he would be busy in Ferelden for a long time afterwards. But it appeared that he had returned to Orlais.

 _What a shame. Now you can’t torture me anymore,_ said Amaril crisply, before sulking off to a dark corner of Nesterin’s mind, returning to be with the other whispering voices of the well.

“Divine Victoria’s not brought you in on Templar business has she?” Nesterin asked Cullen, frowning.

Such a thing would not be good for him, Nesterin fretted. If he had to be here, amongst the Lyrium, as the Templars moved mages into the spire, it would surely bring back too many bad memories.

“No. I’m here for you actually,” Cullen confessed. “I’ve brought someone to see you.”

* * *

 

As he led her through the tower and towards the grand entrance, Nesterin wondered who her mystery guest might be.

It could be meant as a nice surprise. Perhaps one of her friends had returned to the city. She pictured Varric waiting for her at the bottom of the steps, smiling as he told her news of the story he kept threatening to publish about her. She pictured Blackwall or Sera offering to take her on some sort of bender, or perhaps Dorian would accompany her to the University to pick through old tomes.

It wasn’t that she would be unhappy to see them, but the thought of seeing anyone from the Inquisition exhausted her. The thought of pretending to laugh felt as if it might cause an ache in her ribcage.  The thought of lying to them made her temple pulse once more.

She almost hoped that it would actually be more bad news.

At the bottom of the steps, though, Nesterin saw that her suspicions were quite wrong.

It was only Falon. Fat from scraps given to him at the Imperial stables and held at the reigns by a chantry horseman. Next to him was a large, brown, Fereldan Forder.

Falon bellowed happily when she approached, tugging a little on his bindings. Nesterin rushed forwards to her Hart and placed her hand against his neck, smoothing over his shining coat.

“Falon! Oh, my friend,” she patted his tummy and saw that he wanted exercise quite desperately. “Oh I’m sorry. I’ve been neglecting you, haven’t I?”

Then she turned her attention to the Forder. She had lovely, intelligent eyes, like two deep wells and a dark mane that caught the light quite prettily.

“You’re beautiful,” she told the Forder, holding her hand out for the horse to sniff. “What’s her name?” she asked Cullen.

“I call her Anthem.”

“Hello, friend Anthem,” smiled Nesterin, patting the horse. She loved the smell of them. It was baled hay, sweat and iron and better than perfume as far as she was concerned. Nesterin buried her head against Falon’s neck to smell it deeper, scratching at the softest spot behind his ear.

When she looked up and smiled at Cullen, he returned it. But shyly. Almost like a young elf, showing her clan  the first rabbit she’d caught and killed herself. It didn’t suit his face.

“There’s a hunting trail just outside of the city. Maybe you’d appreciate a few hours of fresh air? You and Falon.”

Nesterin stopped stroking Falon’s velveteen muzzle and looked up at Cullen with a pained expression.

“I’m too busy for a hunt, Cullen” she confessed.

Many Orlesian nobles had taken to inviting her on hunts too- wyvern hunting being a favored sport of this country- possibly imagining that it would appeal to her Dalish sensibilities. Not realising that, as a First, hunting had never been one of her duties. Truthfully, she also found it barbaric to hunt for something that no one had any intention of  eating.

“Just a ride then? For the sake of Falon. He wants exercise,” Cullen insisted.

That was difficult to deny. Poor, dear, fat Falon. She had let him down. And would probably have to have stern words with the Imperial stables. Falon was an old veteran, used to running and charging and the command of a mistress who could not get into battle fast enough. Just because he would try and eat everything in sight did not mean that they should feed him everything he wanted.

But Cullen’s insistence to go riding puzzled her. It was not as if he had ever made an effort to seek out her company before. In fact, he had even actively avoided it on several occasions. She’d tried to coax him to drinks with her after Corypheus but he’d always refuse. Once or twice she’d asked him about his personal life, or tastes or habits and he would always turn her attention back to Inquisition business.

After Corypheus, he went away to visit his sister often. After the Inquisition ended, he was one of the first to leave for good.

“Cassandra or the Iron Bull?” she sighed.

“Pardon?”

“Who put you up to this? Cassandra or the Iron Bull?”

“Neither. I wanted to ride with you,” said Cullen.

He had never been a player of the grand game and didn’t even try to mask the hurt in his voice.

Nesterin felt a stab of guilt. If he was trying to be friends with her, after all these years, and this was the reaction he got, she could see why he hadn’t bothered before now.

“A ride would be lovely,” she conceded, by way of an apology. “Thank you Cullen.”

At first, it was easy to forget that the riding trail sat in the shadow of a great city. They passed through cultivated apple orchards and trees that had been allowed to grow tall and curved. She felt at ease when the sky was small, barely more than a glimpse of grey through the dense leaves above her. It reminded her of being a child in the forests of the Free Marches.

But the trail soon sloped upwards, towards the mountains, and the grass became sparse amongst the rocks. She could see the city walls then. She could see  the White Spire, Cathedral, and Alienages sitting like deep wounds upon the landscape.

“How is the sanctuary? Did Olympe see that you got the money?”  she asked politely whilst they rode.

“We’ve opened the doors. Your donation will go a long way. ”

“I’m very glad.”

They said nothing in the minutes proceeding. Pleasant birdsong accompanied the sound of Falon and Anthem’s hooves crunching into the rocks on the trail, but she couldn’t enjoy them. Tension seemed to irradiate from Cullen. It poured out from his stiff posture and clenched jaw before sitting heavily in the space between them. It was the same sensation she used to feel when she got close to a rift.

“You-” Nesterin began.

“I-” Cullen started at the same time.

They both apologised, profusely. Then, when they stopped, it seemed as if the unbearable silence would continue again.

“Please. Go ahead,” Nesterin practically begged.

“I was just going to say that it was a surprise to hear that you were staying in the White Spire.”

“I am a mage. It’s where the chantry says we belong,” she pointed out sarcastically.

“I can’t imagine ever seeing anyone like you at the circle in Ferelden.”

“Like me?” asked Nesterin, wondering if she should be offended.

“You’ve always been so...well…. _Dalish_.”

Nesterin laughed bitterly. “The Dalish think I’m completely the opposite. All shemlen airs and chantry graces. I don’t belong anywhere at all.”

She sighed heavily, looking out over the city, feeling sorry that she couldn’t be better company. If Cullen thought riding would lift her spirits, he would be bitterly disappointed.

“As it happens, I wanted to talk to you about that,” said Cullen, swallowing, and suddenly looking very nervous.

“Oh?”

He said nothing. Their mounts walked in time, almost matching the steady rhythm of her heartbeat. Nesterin watched the protrusion in Cullen’s throat bounce frantically as he kept on swallowing.

“Cullen...I believe it’s customary that when someone says they want to talk they actually have to start talking.”

Finally, he forced out, “I should have spoken to you.”

“When?”

“At the bonfire. The last time we met. I should have spoken to you. But I was so....I couldn’t stand it.”

“I don’t understand,” Nesterin confessed, turning to him. She could feel how deeply she was frowning.

“You didn’t look like you at all….you still don’t. And I couldn’t stand it.”

But she still didn’t understand.

Nesterin tugged on Falon’s reigns and bade him to stop, about halfway up the incline they were climbing. Falon stepped backwards a little, sensing his mistresses’ discomfort, perhaps preparing for an attack.

“What exactly do I look like?” she demanded.

 _Like a dead thing,_ said something in the back of her head. _Like a worn down, worn out creature. Like a fading  whisper from a well of sorrows._

“Cullen,” she said firmly, when he stayed silent. 

“Like me,” he confessed.

“A very large, blonde, human man? That dress really did work wonders for my figure.”

“I saw so much of the way I was in you,” Cullen interrupted in a strangled tone, stopping Nesterin’s jokes immediately. She felt a strange pressure coming to rest on her ribcage.

“You know what happened to me after Kirkwall, don’t you?” he continued.

Nesterin bowed her head, ashamed. “Yes. Cassandra told me...I’m sorry. You deserved to tell me in your own time.”

“It was important that you knew. Especially given that you’re a mage too. If we’d been closer, perhaps I could have spoken to you about it sooner and not left it to Cassandra. But we weren’t.”

“You were my military advisor Cullen. My friend. A dear friend. I’m so sorry if you never felt that I-”

“-You asked to spend more time with me once. But I pushed you away. Do you remember?”

“Yes. I remember,” said Nesterin. 

They’d played chess together. She’d been trying so hard to look like she was wearing her title with ease that she’d misread him and overstepped her bounds. He’d rebuffed her quickly, and called out her favoritism for Solas. When she’d suggested friendship, he’d only responded with what she thought was scepticism.

After that, they never played chess together again.

“But I don't fault you for being professional,” she added quickly. “We had a grave job to do.”

Cullen shook his head sadly, looking down at his hands “I can’t blame my actions on professional decorum. I acted as if Solas had claimed you. But mages… even strange, pretty, dalish mages aren’t _things_ to be claimed. I should have learned better from Ferelden. I should have made more of an effort to see you the way that you deserved.”

She could tell that he was furious with himself, and she hated to think that she was the cause. Gently, Nesterin nudged Falon forwards, so that she was closer. Timidly, she reached out her hand and placed it near Cullen’s wrist.

“I’m as much to blame as you,” she said gently. “I should have made an effort to see you as more than a human and an ex-Templar. I had my own ignorances in those days. And my own hate.”

She tried to smile at Cullen. She tried, with a glance, to reassure him that there was time to try to be better. But when he looked up at her, he looked more miserable than ever.

“I should have been a friend to you,” he insisted. “I could have helped you realise what you were doing to yourself. What you’re _still_ doing to yourself.”

Nesterin pressed her fingers against her temples and let out a heavy sigh. “I know Leliana thinks I shouldn’t involve myself with trying to find Solas. I know they’re leaving me out of the loop because they think I’m not strong enough to help. But _no one_ else alive understands-”

“I’m not talking about Solas. I’m only talking about you,” Cullen interrupted.

“You can’t be. There isn’t anything else left,” she said quietly. 

“I know that’s what you think. I _know_. You give everything you have and then you wonder what’s left of you. I know that feeling,” he coloured slightly before continuing. “And I know what it’s like when you lose control and your body starts begging for it.”

For one horrified minute, Nesterin thought he was talking about _sex._ But when the wave of discomfort had finished crashing over her, she put herself in Cullen’s shoes and realised that there was another, far more likely, topic of conversation.

“Mages only take lyrium in small doses,” she pointed out delicately. “It’s not the same for us.”

In truth, she had not needed lyrium for a long time. Her magic was potent enough without it now. It was probably another side effect of Solas’ meddling with the very fabric of her existence.

“Nesterin, I’m talking about alcohol,” Cullen said firmly.

At this, Nesterin looked him dead in the eye. His eyes really were a remarkable shade. Almost a light enough brown to be considered yellow, with flecks of green and grey and gold twisting like rivers through his irises. They were so warm and so serious- the complete opposite of the arch, icy, twinkle that Solas wore. He was trying so hard to be kind to her. He was trying so hard to understand.

And in return, she tried so hard not to laugh at him.

But she couldn’t help it. A bark escaped her throat and Nesterin clapped her hand over her mouth, feeling terrible.

“I’m sorry Cullen. I mean...you flatter me, really. What you went through...during your time at the circle, during the Inquisition, how you coped without Lyrium….that’s not….I just get drunk and make a fool of myself sometimes…It’s as different as night and day.”

“Your hand trembles after too long without it, doesn’t it?” Cullen persisted, his voice getting gruff and low. “Your heart beats faster. You sweat and you have to fight not to throw up. You _see_ things. Memories and shapes that aren’t really there….”

Nesterin frowned. She plunged a hand into her hair. She stopped looking at Cullen.

More than anything, she wanted to say, _It’s not like that_. But she couldn’t.

“And then you drink. And it’s better.”

Shame rushed over her as she twined her arm around her stomach. It tasted like bile and she couldn’t understand why Cullen was being so serious and so gentle. She wasn’t like him at all. No one had force fed her alcohol for years and years in the service of the chantry and made her need it to get by.

“I understand. More than most people, I do honestly,” he said. “ Templars often go from lyrium to alcohol, to lyrium, to the whorehouse, to alcohol to poppies and back to lyrium. And it’s all to fill a hole, or bury a feeling, or to run away from ourselves.”

People didn’t get _addicted_ to alcohol, Nesterin told herself. Not like lyrium. No one ever sprouted red crystals from their spinal columns after too much Orlesian wine.

“Come to the sanctuary with me. I want you to see it,” said Cullen with a quiet insistence that broke her heart. It was like Jurgen’s offer of working at the university all over again. “Let me help you.”

“You know I can’t do that,” she said sharply. When she sucked in her breath, Falon could feel her distress, he bellowed and backed up slightly.

“You can. You need help.”

She laughed hysterically. “No. No Cullen. I am not a Templar. I don’t...deserve...I have a _job_ to do…..I promised…”

Before he had time to respond, Nesterin tapped Falon with the heel of her boot and urged him into a gallop. She heard Cullen call out to her, but knew she was lighter and Falon was stronger and there was no way that Anthem and he would be able to catch them.

 _I disgust myself,_ she thought simply.

It was a hard, sharp, simple thought. It cut like a knife.

_I disgust myself._

When she saw that they had climbed yet farther up the mountains instead of heading down, Nesterin cursed. She pulled Falon to a quick stop, frightening him and  causing the Hart to rear up onto his hind legs.

It had never been a problem before. When Falon reared up, she could clamp her strong thighs together and hang on to the reigns, tightly, with both of her hands.

But her thighs were weak and wasted now. And she only had one hand.

She blew from Falon like a leaf from a branch. In the air, she channeled her energy into casting a disruption field over herself, slowing her fall. She hit the ground, more softly than she might have done, but enough to badly injure her shoulder.

A hiss of pain gave way to a groan of frustration when she heard Cullen catch up to her. She pulled herself up, shaking as she looked down at her collarbone. It was badly bruised but not broken. And at least it was on the side of the amputated arm. It wasn’t like she was using it anyway, she thought bitterly.

“I’m fine,” she called out through gritted teeth, as Cullen dismounted. She held up her remaining arm to try and stop him from approaching.

He took a step forwards just as Nesterin heard the deep rumble of  a clap of thunder.

 _Perfect,_ Nesterin cursed to herself, waiting for the heavens to pour down upon them. But as she looked up, she noticed Cullen staring behind her, aghast.

That’s when she heard a faint sound, almost like the far off cry of halla. Turning around, she saw a cloud of black smoke rising up over the city and a faint blue pulse running through it. It hadn’t been thunder she’d heard. It had been an explosion.

An explosion enclosed within the Alienage walls.

And it wasn’t halla crying that she heard.

It was people screaming.  

 


	28. Le courroux des cieux

Riding on Falon, Nesterin threw herself down the mountain with an almost suicidal abandon. As her body melted into the sleek coat of the Hart, the passing colours of the trail all bled into one another. The sound of hooves on the dirt was a relentless drumbeat and she urged herself forwards, feeling the cool wind slice against her face.

“It came from the alienage,” Cullen shouted beside her. Anthem was a little smaller than Falon but the pretty Forder could sense the tension in the air and the desperation of her rider and she gamely matched the pace that Nesterin set.

“There’s nothing but wooden shacks piled on top of eachother behind those walls. It’ll go up like a funeral pyre,” she returned.

In moments like this, Nesterin always remembered what she’d been taught during her time in the Inquisition. She tried to control the racing of her heart, she made sure to keep her eyes and her mind sharp and braced her body under the weight of her responsibilities.

The lessons had been hard ones, written with blood and bruises and the bones of dead men. But now she welcomed the rush. She could focus when Falon was flying over rocks. She felt strangely ease when she could see the smoke rising clearly and tangibly into the air to meet her.

When Cullen barked:

“What do you suggest?”

She was more than ready for him.

Nesterin was coming to realise that being the Inquisitor gave her permission to separate from herself. She’d fought against the title when she'd only wanted to be Nesterin Lavellan, but now the word ‘Inquisitor’ came with a sense of relief.  Like stepping out from under a thick, heavy, black cloak.

“Get as close as we can, as quickly as we can. If there’s a panic, it won’t be long until the town’s soldiers turn on the elves.”

“They wouldn’t do that,” Cullen insisted.

“They absolutely would,” Nesterin said darkly, thinking of every history book she’d ever read.

Beyond the Sun Gates, the city was panicking. The black smoke rising from the walled off slum had drifted into the more prosperous, human parts of Val Royeaux. It had spread and enveloped sky, turning the streets dark despite the hour of the day.

It got darker still as they rode closer to the alienage. They had to fight against the panicked flow of people who were fleeing from it. Above their heads, flecks of grey ash began swirling and falling like flakes of snow. She could taste remnants of magic in the air, and she sensed the jagged edges of the veil around her.

Nesterin had begged and begged Leliana for more time to figure out how to help those of her people who had come into magic.

It seemed as though her time was up.

Over the Alienage walls, the sound of screaming rose as high and as thick as the smoke. The ground moved as waves of large black rats scampered away from the scene, darting between the legs of their mounts.

This was her failure. This was her fault.

The gate into the alienage was made of rusted metal sheeting and topped with sharply pointed spikes. On the side facing the human parts of the city, hateful language had been plastered all over it in red and white paint. Close to the wall, Nesterin could hear the shout of soldiers and the clatter of their armour as they marched in formation.

The gate was only a small opening, she saw, and there were thousands of inhabitants inside. People would be crushed and killed trying to get out if the operation was not handled properly. Nesterin thanked the stars that she had Cullen with her.

“You need to make sure this evacuation is organized,” she told him. “ No one can oversee a march like you.”

“But I don’t have any authority amongst these men,” Cullen rightly pointed out.

“Surely you outrank them somehow? And if not, pretend you do. It always worked for me in the Inquisition,” she said with a weak chuckle.

He looked reluctant but she shot him a pleading look.

Nesterin watched Cullen gaze from her, to the alienage wall, back to her again with a growing resolve and a solemn nod.

Perhaps, Nesterin realised quite suddenly, it wasn’t their differences that had kept them from being friends all these years. Perhaps they were simply too alike and too prone to self loathing to be comfortable with the reflection they both saw in the other.

“I’m going inside. Don’t let them hurt my people,” she told him as she was leaving.

Behind her, the last words she heard from Cullen was his brusque introduction to a soldier,

“I’m Former Knight Commander Rutherford. Who’s charge of the evacuation here?”

And she felt quite certain that it would be him before the day was out.

Someone, a soldier most likely, shouted at her as she approached the gates. Nesterin ignored it. Someone tried to take a swipe and Falon, someone else tried to grab onto her shirts, and she increased her speed, shucking them off easily.

“Alright, Falon,” she murmured softly into the ear of her friend. “I hope you had a nice holiday because your retirement is just about over.”

 

* * *

 

Inside of the alienage, Nesterin couldn’t help but think of Haven.

Amongst the snow and the screaming, the splintering and those terrible, haunted looking red templars, Nesterin had learned the first of many bitter lessons.

There, a  young, wild, Dalish girl had fumbled. She’d blundered. She’d hesitated. Adan, the apothecary was killed when shards of exploding pottery hit his skull. She’d spent too long on the ropes around Minaeve’s wrists.  Seggrit had been trapped and burned to death, screaming in agony. She hadn’t thought. She’d kept trying to break down the door. And there were soldiers and pilgrims and simple people who had all died. All these years later, some of the bodies still hadn’t been recovered from underneath the piles of melting snow.

This was the same. This was worse.

But she’d learned. She wouldn’t let herself fumble like that ever again .In the here and now, she headed straight towards the epicentre of the explosion.

Whatever magic had caused it had flattened the surrounding buildings into nothing but shards of wood and mortar. She prayed that it hadn’t left a tear in the veil because, without the mark, she had no possible way of mending a rift.

A little way on, amongst the rubble, Nesterin thought she heard the squeaking of a cat. She got closer and realised it was a woman. Her age, perhaps a little older, sitting upright as she quietly murmured, “Help. Help. Help,” over and over to herself.

There was rubble piled up around her torso, a large gash in her forehead bled onto her chin and her dress was ripped and dirty and it exposed her left breast. Nesterin pulled it to cover her, but she didn’t react. Through her glassy, dazed expression, Nesterin recognised the early stages of shock setting in and worked quickly to move the rubble around her.

The woman’s left leg was nothing more than a mess of blood, exposed fat, tissue and bone. The right still retained some shape, but it was ragged and open and bleeding. Nesterin thought back to her shrivelled, stinking, necrotic arm, when all of the magic had fallen away. She doubted very much either leg would be saved. She didn’t even know where to start healing them. So Nesterin had to settle for sending a wash of pain killing energy over the woman.

While doing so, she flagged down an elf who was running past. He was young and dark haired, and he wore an Orlesian mask. This wasn’t so unusual; even in the Alienage there were players of the game. But now his mask was sitting around his neck, revealing a soft face- little more than a boy’s- covered in dust and bruises.

Nesterin asked him for help, locking her remaining arm around the other woman’s armpit.

“Oh Andraste,” muttered the male elf weakly, hesitating and looking sick at the sight of blood.

“It’s alright. Take her here. We’ll do it together,” Nesterin told him softly, pointing to the woman’s hips. They groaned and struggled to lift her, but she had the sickly build of a half-starved alienage elf and soon they managed. Nesterin signalled with her head to a door frame, lying amongst the rubble that would make for a serviceable stretcher.

Once the woman was on the door, more elves hurried to help. Two of them had clearly been caught in the blast also, with dusty shirts and rubble in their hair. The other two looked like a couple, the young woman carrying a child of about five in her arms. She set him down to aid with lifting, but the child followed her and reached up to put his own small palm on the door.

“Where’s the nearest doctor?” she asked them. They no longer needed her help to support the woman, so she stepped away.

“Half a mile,” said the woman with the child.

“Take her there. Thank you,” she instructed, nodding her gratitude.

Beyond the site of the explosion, a few of the dwelling places had caught fire. In a moment, it seemed so like the funalis bonfires Nesterin had watched in the Imperial Palace. But the humans had been cheering that night. They’d been wearing fine clothes, they’d been drinking and eating as much as they wanted. The soft melodies of instruments had entertained them while they stood and spoke and laughed.

But the elves here- _her_ people here- screamed and the fire ripped through everything they had in the whole world.

Because most of the homes were nothing more than wooden boards cobbled together, any building that reached over one story looked lopsided and barely able to hold its own weight. Because the alienage was so overcrowded most of the buildings reached three stories, and against the wall the rooftops were a jagged mess of chimney pots and broken beams. Red hot fire licked like tongues against them.  

From the second storey window of one of the burning buildings, Nesterin saw the flash of skin jutting out. The closer she got, slipping through the narrow streets, the easier it was to recognize the fingers of a hand clawing desperately at a huge, heavy, wooden beam that had fallen over a window.

Below, there was a group of four elves calling up for whoever was inside to jump. But the beam wouldn’t move and the flames around the building had blocked up every other exit. The desperate screams coming from inside were unbearable.

Nesterin urged Falon forwards, so that she could get closer to the beam. When it was in range, she leapt from the hart, fixing her feet to the ground like an anchor. She felt the veil wash over her like a whisper, a sensation of pins and needles spread through her fingertips and she focused on her diaphragm. It was flat, smooth, strong and at the centre of her. The fade surrounded her, enveloped her, waiting to be channelled through her. And the waking world was made of tensile matter, ready to be pressed and pushed and shaped. Nesterin breathed in and began her spell.

The beam was as broad as a tree trunk and it was wedged into the window frame as neat and as fast as a puzzle piece. Nesterin gritted her teeth as she let it loosen, focusing so that she could do it slowly. The force of ripping it out without care might send the whole building toppling to the ground.

The foundations lurched worryingly and Nesterin held the beam as securely as she could, gritting her teeth with the effort. Soon, there was a gap wide enough for a slim elf to crawl through. Hands passed a crying child through the window, she fell onto sheet below, held by the elves at the bottom.

“Keep it steady, Lady Herald,” said a crisp Orlesian voice besides her ear.

“Fancy...meeting…. you…. here,” Nesterin returned through gritted teeth.

Her staccato, forced greeting was all that she could manage under the present circumstances, with her focus devoted solely to the beam. But she didn’t have to turn around to imagine Briala, her sharp features and dark hair obscured by a mask and a cowl, standing behind her.

Another child was passed through the window. It seemed as though an entire family was being kept inside and Nesterin almost groaned when the russet coloured head of a slightly older boy, maybe twelve years old, appeared next.

And then, just as he was starting to pull himself through, there was another explosion.

It happened somewhere in one of the houses across from them. Perhaps the fire had found bottles of alcohol in someone’s private store, or a jar of oils, or a bag of charcoal dust. The cause didn’t matter. But the narrow streets did. The fire spilled out of windows and holes and clawed its way through the wood, leaving Nesterin with mere seconds to react.

It was pure instinct and it happened in a moment.

The air pulsed and the earth trembled as a ripple travelled quickly through the veil like the cracking of a whip. The smell of burning fruitwood filled up Nesterin’s nostrils. On the ground, the people found themselves saved from the tongues of orange fire and the shattered glass that reigned down on them. Even Falon was protected.

But the barrier she’d cast over the street had broken her focus on the beam above.

Feeling sick, she allowed herself a moment of relief that three of the children were safe.

But she knew that when she looked up, the boy would be dead. His head caught between the window frame and the heavy beam she’d had to drop.

 _Take it back, take it back, I can’t hold on much longer,_ Nesterin heard Amaril gasp.

Nesterin forced her head up at the window, and to her utter disbelief the beam remained in the air, the boy was alive and he was beginning to clamber through the window.

_That’s not possible._

_Please. I’m begging you…._ Amaril roared, like a wounded animal.

So Nesterin focused on the beam once more, in time for the mother to finally emerge, leaping desperately onto the sheet before crying and pulling her children close to her. She let the beam down gently back into place and couldn’t stop staring at the boy. How could he still be alive?

 _Fuck,_ Nesterin heard Amaril croak.

A wave of nausea overtook her, the world started to lurch woozily and Nesterin had to double over just to steady herself.  

She felt like a sponge that had been twisted and wrung out, devoid of almost all of the mana that was usually stored up and pricking inside of her finger tips.

And her head was swimming with the realisation of what had happened. In the time it took to draw breath, Nesterin had cast two completely different spells at completely the same time. She’d looked at the ground, at the people around her, casting her barrier, and yet...two storeys above, the beam had stayed in the air.

_Hey...you can’t take all of the credit. One of those spells was mine._

It simply wasn’t possible.

 _Casting through the veil is dreadful,_ Amaril continued, disgusted. _I don’t know how you can stand it. It’s like wading through wet clay._

Nesterin felt a light hand touch her shoulder, only for it to be withdrawn incredibly quickly.

Briala cleared her throat. Nesterin looked up and thought she saw, underneath the mask, concern in the Orlesian elf’s frown

But it should have been a look of horror and confusion.

Briala wasn’t a mage, Nesterin reminded herself. Maybe she saw nothing out of the ordinary in it. Or maybe there was just too much out of the ordinary happening at all once. The Alienage had just exploded afterall.

“We need to get to somewhere more open,” said Briala as the barriers began to fade.

“I could put this out...but I don’t think I have another spell in me,” Nesterin confessed. She was almost embarrassed to be so drained after a simple barrier and a bit of heavy lifting. Honestly a child could manage it.

“I believe the water in the Alienage works just as well at putting out fires as the water anywhere else,” Briala returned drily. “It would be nice to put it to some use since it’s not much good for drinking.”

Nesterin bit down on her jaw, she concentrated on her diaphragm again but the air around her felt sluggish and stagnant. And without her magic she was just a one-armed elf, of no real use to anyone.

“I just need a moment or two,” Nesterin insisted.

“We don’t need the Herald of Andraste personally putting out every fire for us. We can handle ourselves.”

As if on cue, elves arrived with buckets of water and cloths tied around their faces, to begin the arduous task of dowsing the flames. Briala held out her hand to help Nesterin up.

“Follow me,” she said. “People are heading towards the vhenadahl. There will be wounded and homeless there. Your presence will no doubt be a comfort to them.”

Nesterin knew what that entailed. She would sit and hold someone’s hand, sing a pretty song and wander like a stupid placid faced doll around people who were bleeding and dying all around her.

But Nesterin  didn’t want to just help people with her _presence._ She wanted to be of practical use. She wanted to put out fires and dive into the burning buildings, she wanted to pull more people out of the rubble and get splinters in her fingers. That was what it meant to be a Knight Enchanter, that was what it meant to be real comfort as opposed to some icon the people could aim their chantry songs towards.

But if that was all she was good for, with all of her magic drained and her damn arm, then what other choice did she have?

* * *

 

Each time Nesterin visited an Alienage, the vhenadahl at the centre of it never failed to make her feel desperately sad. In Val Royeaux, the city elves had decorated theirs with ribbon and brightly coloured cloth, but behind the high walls and surrounded by rocks, it could not flourish. The elves of Val Royeaux must have thought it a grand, large, old oak but to Nesterin it looked malnourished, sickly and pale. It had been twisted, backwards and forwards in it’s desperate reach towards something like sunlight.

It always reminded her of the city elves themselves.

They were greeted near the vhenadahl by a balding elf wearing a plain leather mask. The crowds were thick with people, wandering and shouting for their loved ones, sitting on the ground with their heads in their hands and despairing out loud. Despite this, they all parted for him and Nesterin guessed that he was their Hahren.

“Marquise,” he said rushing towards Briala. “It’s as we feared. They shut the gates. Just like in the old days. And now we’re trapped.”

Briala cursed and the balding elf looked grave, but neither seemed surprised at the news. Cullen would have done his best, but he couldn’t go orders from on high. Nesterin felt a dull ache in her chest when she realised that she was not much surprised either.

Deshanna was right. Humans always forgot so quickly.

“Emperor Gaspard will not hear the end of it when this is over, I promise you ,Hahren,” said Briala severely. “But we can look after our own. The fires will be out by nightfall, I promise.”

“And what about the injured, what about the homeless? What about the dying?”

“I’ll watch over them,” said Nesterin firmly.

Now that the adrenaline of the initial panic had subsided, the words _This is all my fault, this is all my fault, this is all my fault,_ hammered away at Nesterin’s brain.

So many injured people. So many dead. So many ruined lives.

The veil felt wrong all over. A wrongness radiated from the people who congregated at the centre and Amaril was a dead whisper who should not have been able to cast magic.

 _I bet I was far more powerful than you before I was dead_ , Amaril shot back. _Even with your stupid veil._

The alienage Hahren looked over at her with a slight start. He dropped his head and descended into a low bow. Nesterin felt a rush of heat in her cheeks and was mortified by the act of deference. He hadn’t bowed to Briala and she had done more for the alienages in Orlais than Nesterin could ever dream of doing.

“My Lady Herald!”

“Nesterin,” she told him. “My name is Nesterin.” She bowed her head in his direction, just as he had done to her, “Anything you need me to do and I will do it, Hahren.”

He suggested leading a prayer, just as Nesterin suspected he would. Later, when she was feeling rebellious she might start boiling bandages, but for now, the prayers and songs would have to suffice.

Briala, on the other hand, prepared to head back towards the commotion. But before she did so, Nesterin hurried towards her, hoping for answers.

“Do you know how this happened?” she asked quietly. Briala had spies and people up and down the alienage. If anyone knew the cause of the explosion, it would be her. Though Nesterin suspected that any answer Briala gave her would only confirm her own suspicions. 

But in response, Briala only bowed her head and she sighed deeply. Before she spoke, Nesterin could see her jaw clenching.

Briala looked up, with tears swimming in the shadows behind her mask. She hissed in sharply to stop them from falling and she said:

“This is my fault.”  
  



	29. Ta foi était forte

 

_I’m sorry, but I think I might have to take a break from singing._

_I could tell you a story, though. Not a canticle. But something, maybe, from when I was a girl. It’s a story that all Dalish children know. My father got tired of telling it to my sisters and I because we begged and begged for it every day._

_It’s about a brave, valiant elf and a group of mean, stinking giants…._

It took Nesterin almost an hour to finish the tale of Fianna and the giants. When clan Lavellan told the story to it’s children, they could usually get it out in a succinct fifteen minutes, but Nesterin kept having to go back and define certain words, phrases and concepts. Some of them were complex; when Fianna forged her ironbark blade, Nesterin had to explain what it was, and she had to give them a cursory guide to Andruil to explain why it was significant that Fianna was marked for her. But some pauses came from problems that were staggeringly simple, like the idea of marking Fianna’s lost love’s grave with a tree. She even had to stop to explain what a bear looked like to a man who was easily in his thirties.

As the story drew to the terrible climax, as Fianna was about to become a giant’s dinner, Nesterin spotted Briala at the edge of the crowd who had drawn close to listen to her talk. The Orlesian woman was dishevelled, she looked tired and was covered with ash. But she nodded to Nesterin, a sign of reassurance, perhaps, that the last of the fires were now smouldering into nothing but smoke.

“And then what?!” demanded someone in the crowd.

Nesterin returned to the story. It was a lesson in brawn over brain- rare for the Dalish but precisely the reason why Nesterin had chosen to tell it. She was in no mood for a story about the Dread Wolf’s tricks. Fianna gave the giants a good thumping and that was the end of it. Black and white. Good triumphing over evil.

When she was finished, she made her excuses and went to find Briala. She wasn’t far away, half sitting, half leaning against a platform leading up to one of the small houses.

Nesterin had never spent much time in the alienage. She’d certainly never been there at dusk, when the shadows from the wall lengthened and it got so much darker from behind them than anywhere else. With all the cramped buildings and narrow alleyways, she noticed that the elves here had a small sky too- just like she used to when she lived in forests.

“Fianna and the giants?” Briala asked. “That’s not one I’ve heard before. It doesn’t seem as delicate as the usual Dalish stories.”

“I didn’t know you were an expert on Dalish stories, Marquise Briala.”

“I’ve heard a few. Enough, at least” Briala smirked, “to know what a bear looks like.”

Nesterin came over to sit beside her,“The fires?”

“Out. We pulled twenty five people out of buildings. Six of them died of smoke inhalation afterwards. And I found out where the explosion came from.”

“Oh?”

“Her name was Anouk. She made clothing for dolls out of a room above a butcher's shop. You should have seen them. The remnants of all of these little silk dresses and miniature masks: it was such fine, delicate work. Our people starve and human children treat their dolls better than us.”

“Oh.”

“We carried her body out. What was left of it. She deserves to be buried with as much respect as the rest. It wasn’t her fault.”

Near the Vhenadahl, people had been passing around grain alcohol brewed in bathtubs and Nesterin had been offered a bottle. Her conversation with Cullen had poisoned the taste somewhat, but he wasn’t wrong. She _had_ needed it to stop her hands from shaking. She held out the bottle to Briala, who took it with a sigh.

“It was quiet here,” said Nesterin. “People have been keeping their spirits up.”

“We flat-ears are resilient folks.”

“And we Dalish savages are good for a story and a trick or two.”

They passed the bottle between them in silence for a few minutes. Both probably thinking about what would come next. It was so strange, as a people they were more powerful than they had been for centuries. But they were still so helpless, like so many pieces of dandelion fluff being blown on the wind.

“We should have spoken sooner, Briala. We should have talked about this.”

“No,” said Briala firmly. “You gave me leave to do my work in the shadows but condemned yourself to the light. I didn’t want people to see you with me.  Humans get so panicky at the sight of us congregating. They always think we’re keeping secrets.”

“But we _were_ keeping a secret. A pretty big one.”

“Exactly. And now that it’s going to be in the open, we should thank our stars that no one can accuse us of collusion.”

That might have been all well and good for the grand game, thought Nesterin, where anything was permissible so long as you didn’t get caught. But something much larger was at stake now. She drank deeply from the bottle, it was like liquid fire.

“I thought I was having a seizure when I drew a bath and it froze over,” confessed Briala with a weak chuckle.

“Mine was fade stepping. I was only about seven. My older sister always used to beat me when we raced. I showed her. Then I learned about fire. After that, my Mamae went apoplectic trying to handle me.”

Poor Mae, thought Nesterin, remembering how she’d sigh and swat and say: _You’re your father’s daughter, alright._ But her mother had been proud of Nesterin. The Dalish prized their mages, even ones who had broken off from their clan. Not like the way it was amongst the humans- no wonder Briala had been terrified.

Nesterin gave her a small, comforting smile. Possibly hoping to show that things were going to be alright, despite knowing that they really weren’t. The alcohol settled warmly in Nesterin’s stomach but the smiles were short lived. Nesterin needed to get out of the alienage as soon as she possibly could, her sisters were probably frightened.

“The Templars will have moved in by nightfall,” Briala predicted grimly.

“Is the alienage ready?”

“No. Things are about to become incredibly difficult for me. For you too, I expect.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get the Eluvian to work. It could have helped.”

“There are other ways to move within Val Royeaux if it comes to that,” shrugged Briala. “Celene knew a great many things that Gaspard still does not. This city is a mask and there are faces underneath it.”

Nesterin suspected nothing less. It had always felt like a city built on secrets.

Then, delicately, she asked, “Briala? Why did you say that the explosion was your fault?”

“I should have found a way to protect them from what’s happening. These are my people. They are my responsibility,” she said simply.

“And Fen’Harel is mine,” murmured Nesterin, more to herself than anything. She took another deep swig of alcohol, dimly aware that she’d been drinking the lion’s share of it.

“I cannot believe you can say that out loud,” Briala admitted. “I was told stories about the Dread Wolf. I almost learned to idolise him. What was he really like?”

“You met him. When we came to Halamshiral,” Nesterin pointed out. The empress died and they’d danced. “He was drunk,” she went on. “And wearing a Helm of the Drasca because….reasons….I suppose,” Nesterin chuckled weakly.  “He was happy that night.”

She’d been surprised by that, she remembered. At how contended he seemed in the corner, watching and listening and drinking whilst Nesterin performed insane feats of social contortion. All evening, she twisted her spine up for nobles, fought assassins, stretched out her neck for favour, unearthed plots and felt her limbs all tangle up to make an impact on the Orlesian court- and always with a totally serene, totally false smile plastered all over her face. She could remember how hot his breath had been on her neck when he’d kissed her in the early hours.

“You call yourself a humble apostate, but secretly you must nurse an affection for Orlesian details and drama,” she had sighed and giggled against him.

He pulled away and he touched her lips with his fingers, he smoothed his knuckles across her cheek bones, he slid his hands down her skin to cradle her jaw.

“My enjoyment of tonight-as with my affections- is located entirely elsewhere, I assure you, Inquisitor.

In the present, Briala was shaking her head.

“I saw Fen’Harel drunk in the winter palace. It’s totally surreal.”

“How do you think I feel?” murmured Nesterin, half of her mind still on that night.

They had taken care to be as discreet as possible during their time in Halamshiral, but after Celene was dead, she’d lapsed. She’ d left her comfortable room at Gaspard’s country estate, sneaking barefoot around his halls towards the servants quarter. She’d taken off her clothes right there in the doorway and it had been so cold in the dark. From the single iron cot bed, she’d watched him regard her in the moonlight, greedy and astonished and- she'd thought- in love with her. Then she’d crossed the distance to crawl over him like vines, kissing his throat and taking him in her hands.

“I saw _all_ of him,” she added, her tongue admittedly loose from the grain alcohol.

Briala stared at her and then she burst out laughing.

“Well it’s true. Years of hearing “may the Dread Wolf take you” and I ended up taking _him_ ,” Nesterin put a hand up to her face, silently chuckling.

“That’s terrible,” Briala said, her shoulders shaking a little. She pushed her mask up so that she could wipe a tear away from her eye.  Nesterin didn’t think she’d ever seen Briala without one. Underneath the mask, Nesterin spotted a galaxy of freckles, fanning out across her face. “Felassan would have a fit.”

 _One of the soldiers from my dream? How does she know him?_ Amaril asked sharply.

“How do you know that name, Briala?”

“How do _you_?”

“They...knew each other. Before the veil. Felassan did most of the talking. And he made all the jokes,” confessed Nesterin. The small smile twitching in the corner of Briala’s mouth seemed to come from a sense of recognition.

“I was right then,” said Briala. She then went on to explain, “Felassan was my Hahren. He taught me the stories so that I could play the game with the best of them. He vanished and I tried to intercept the Dread Wolf’s spies. I tried to find him. I might have gotten somewhere but ever since he took back the eluvians, his people move like spirits. Did Fen’harel ever tell you what became of him?”

“I don’t know. I’m so sorry.”

Briala looked up at the sky and murmured, like a prayer, “Where are you, Hahren?”

More secrets, thought Nesterin with a sigh. Another thread to add to the tangle of ropes that Solas seemed to wrap around her. It grew tight and heavy and she looked out at the alienage.

“This wasn’t how I pictured the end of the world. It’s so slow. It’s like he’s...teasing us...I don’t get it.”

“Perhaps he found a way to do it gently?” asked Briala.  

“Like slowly boiling rabbits alive in a pot,” said Nesterin darkly. “They’re dead before they even realise it.”

“Perhaps he found a way to preserve the elves- if no one else. Felassan could be with him.  Maybe he means to protect us from what’s happening, or else why would he have so many agents now?”

“Felassan means slow arrow. He must have told you the story. About Fen’Harel and the beast.”

“He did.”

“So then you know what Fen’Harel said to the villagers, right?”

“ _Wh_ _en did I say that I would save you?”_ Briala answered.

“It’s not a theory I would put much faith in. We’re not the elves he knows. We’re something new.”

 _Something broken,_ Amaril agreed.

“Felassan was teaching me to think like the Dread Wolf. He didn't teach me well enough to prevent this.”

Half of the bottle was gone now. But Nesterin felt stronger than she had done in the wake of her double casting, she could feel mana storing up inside of her and she turned to Briala.

“Let me teach you something, then,” said Nesterin. “It’s more of a Fianna lesson than a Dread Wolf one. But it might help.”

* * *

 Briala carefully selected a quiet alleyway in the alienage. It was as narrow and claustrophobic as a wooden coffin and the dirt streets shimmered with the slime and effluvium poured out from the windows above. All of the stars were blotted out by the darkness that clung to every corner and crevice whilst soot and filth sat heavily on the windows of the run-down buildings.

Whilst Briala selected the spot, Nesterin had already selected another drink. After another long sip, she set the fresh bottle of grain alcohol on the floor beside her foot. She felt herself swaying slightly on the spot and struggled not to lose her footing.

“Maybe it’s best to keep a clear head for this part?” Briala asked.

“My head’s as clear as it’s ever going to be,” shrugged Nesterin and she only slurred a little as spoke. “Now, we’re going to try and build up to a barrier.”

“You want me to cast?” Briala asked, stunned.

“That’s the general idea. You probably won’t get it tonight, but wouldn’t you like to at least see if you could make something happen on purpose?”

“I don’t…”

“It’s really not as bad as you think. It actually ends up being a bit of a relief. I bet you can feel the energy building and building inside you...sort of like needing to vomit after a heavy meal.”

Briala raised her eyebrows, “Do all mages get to learn these things in such evocative terms?”

Nesterin had to concede that her technique was slightly different from her own teachers. From Deshanna, she learned the importance of unshakeable will.  As with the history, as with the lore and the rituals, those lessons were relentless, intensive and like stumbling around blind in a room, forever banging your shins on the furniture, until you learned to feel for the shape of things. Deshanna kept her frustrated on purpose. She barked orders, threw crockery around and demanded spells far beyond Nesterin’s capability. And the more angry and powerless Nesterin felt, the easier she found it to push back against the false realities kept in place by the veil.

“Focus. Focus. Always focus,” Deshanna used to say. She’d give Nesterin a series of sharp thwacks against the back of her legs with her keeper’s staff while she was casting and say: “That was a demon. Don’t give into it.”

When Solas commented on her indomitable focus, Nesterin responded drily, “You clearly weren’t taught magic with a keeper screaming in your ears and pretending to be a demon on a near constant basis. I had to learn to focus or she would have driven me mad.”

Solas, on the other hand, was always more concerned with the feelings in things. He seemed to treat magic like a painting or a song; as an act of creation rather than a frustrated scream of pure force.

The language he used to describe and instruct was so sensual it often bordered on the obscene, especially when Nesterin had wanted him so badly. She used to flush red, right up to her ears, when he talked about the drag of the fade on their skin and she imagined him feeling over her body the way that he cast. Gently learning, delicately testing and then bringing her off with the surest of touches.

Deshanna hit her with sticks when she taught, Solas simply made love to her.

For Briala, Nesterin imagined she’d have to find an approach somewhere in the middle.

“How aware are you of the fade?” she asked her new pupil.

“Your people call the fade The Beyond. It used to be a Holy place. I know the Chantry says it’s made of older things than we can comprehend and I know you’ve stepped through it. More than once,” Briala recited.

“I don’t want facts. I mean, how aware are you of the fade right now?”

Briala thought for a minute, then she pulled a face,“I’m aware of the vomiting sensation. You weren’t wrong about that.”

Nesterin was beginning to feel her own vomiting sensation, which had more to do with grain alcohol than with mana or spell casting. She pushed it down and went on:

“That’s different. That’s you. Wanting desperately to connect with something beyond yourself. So close your eyes and let it happen.”

When Briala shut her eyes, Nesterin snuck a little more alcohol before asking, “What do you feel?”

The Orlesian elf concentrated for a minute and then shook her head, “Nothing.”

“That’s not true.”

“I honestly don’t feel anything.”

It must be much harder, Nesterin thought, to try and do this as an adult. Children didn’t deal in abstract concepts, only in the reality of what they could hear and touch and taste. They didn’t care if someone told them they shouldn't be able to do something, especially if they knew full well that they could. For children, it was just a case of learning to speak the language, for an adult it was a case of learning to hear it after decades of silence.

“So you’re standing in a giant void?” she shot back at Briala. “Well, fuck, I guess the world really did end and you and I are dead in a hole,” she’d started to slur slightly, and fought to sound more sober, adding softly, “Take a deep breath. Then tell me everything you feel, everything you hear, everything you smell.”

Nesterin heard Briala breathe deeply, and her nostrils flared beneath her mask.

“Shit, smoke, alcohol. Your breathing, people talking beside the venhedahl, a rat behind a barrell. The ground beneath my feet, my mask on my face, my shirt against my collar bone and-” Briala broke off from her list with a gasp.

“And?”

“Vibrations.”

_Solas._

“That’s the veil. It’s only thin. Push past it,” said Nesterin.

It was hypocritical of her to say so, because she never could. After his letters had been burned, his presents broken and his child had slipped softly into the night, the veil was one of the few things of Solas’ making that lingered. It was like standing, every day, in the rotunda and listening to the laughing wolves. It was like feeling his hand, always, pressed into the small of her back.

“It’s like water. Everything’s moving and flowing together,” Briala asserted, eyes still closed. Nesterin was actually quite impressed. She had not expected to get this far on a first attempt.

“I’m going to cast something,” said Nesterin, “Keep your eyes shut. Concentrate on what changes.”

Though fire was Nesterin’s chosen element, she couldn’t bear to see more of it in the alienage tonight. If Briala’s bathtub incident was anything to go by, the other woman might find an affinity with ice and so that was what Nesterin opted to do. She concentrated on the ground beside Briala and imagined herself pulling loose a thread from the air. Gently, she took the thread and she plucked it, as easily as a bow string or a fiddle.

A thin wall of ice pushed itself out of the dirt like a weed, stopping at about ankle length.

Briala flinched.

She reached out to steady herself but she was far away from the wall and Nesterin had to step in, letting Briala hold onto her shoulder. But she didn’t open her eyes, she only murmured.

“Everything changes.”

“Not everything. It’s only a tiny thread of the fade being pulled at,” Nesterin corrected gently.

She tried to remember if she used to be so overwhelmed by the mere act of casting. She didn’t think so.

“I’ll try again. Concentrate a little harder, try to find my thread,” said Nesterin.

She plucked at the fade again, and cast another little ice wall. For Briala’s sake, she tried to make it as delicate as she possibly could and the icework came up as clear and thin as glass. It was already melting and dissolving before it was finished.

Maybe she should try to find a different word to describe the feeling of a spell, thought Nesterin. Every mage had their own sense and sensibility when it came to the fade. Part of the job was finding the right language to translate magic into, and maybe threads worked for Nesterin but not for Briala.

Briala only shook her head wildly, “No, it’s _everything_. There’s...the ocean and there’s you. Another entire ocean inside of it,” she was starting to sound like Cole and Nesterin frowned. Briala was ambitious and powerful but had she really managed to attract spirits and demons to her so quickly? “Drowning... you change everything…”

“Focus on the smell of shit,” said Nesterin sharply, as soon as she heard those familiar words. “And the smoke. Alcohol. Rats in a barrel. Open your eyes.”

When Briala did, they were wide and staring. “Was that the mark?”

“The mark got taken away and most of my arm got taken with it,” said Nesterin, shaking the stump in Briala’s direction. “I suppose some of the magic lingers. Mages have told me I feel a little unnatural sometimes.”

After she learned to open rifts at will, Vivienne and Dorian had registered their discomfort, but after the mark was removed, it was a power she no longer possessed. It shouldn’t have affected anyone now.

“That was more than a _little_ unnatural. I felt a thousand threads pulling in all directions.”

Perhaps Briala felt the Well of Sorrows, thought Nesterin. Threads pulling in all directions was an accurate way to describe how she felt whenever she stopped trying to suppress the voices.

“Maybe you’re getting overwhelmed,” suggested Nesterin. “We should stop.”

“No, I want to try again.

“Those words might as well be written on the gravestone of every mage who ever became an abomination,” warned Nesterin.

“I didn’t feel any demons. I only felt you. I’m going to try again.”

“Okay. I won’t cast this time. This time it will be all you.”

 _Maybe I should try something…_ said Amaril. Nesterin had been thinking that too. All this teaching Briala had made her desperate to find a spot to test out double casting and make sense of what was happening to her.

_Later. If she feels it, I don’t know how I’m even going to begin to explain._

* * *

 Briala had a better time in the Fade whilst Nesterin was trying her best to keep out of it. There was no moment of revelation or great blast of power from the woman, but Nesterin knew better than to expect it. Sometimes a little chip at the rocks on the side of the mountain was better than nothing.

But when something like a spark came to Briala’s hand, Nesterin spotted the machinations behind her frown and was not at all surprised when she finally asked,

“How long would it take every single elf who came into magic to learn to harness their powers?”

“I’ve been learning for more than twenty years, ask me in another twenty,” said Nesterin. She might have been a few years younger than Briala, but she felt like a weary old Hahren when she said it.

“But if we were in a hurry? If we only learned a few, simple spells?”

“You mean a few defensive spells. Maybe a ranged attack or two?” Nesterin guessed, sighing.

“Perhaps.”

“You _are_ like him,” said Nesterin with a bitter laugh.

“How?”

“You both seem to have the same cynical impulse to burn everything and everyone to the ground. Trying to instigate an uprising right now is unfeasible. Not to mention utterly insane.”

“Not as unfeasible as you might think. You may have spent your time in Val Royeaux under the protection of the chantry but we are always on the cusp of an uprising in this city. As for insane... many rebellions have been fought by people who only just picked up weapons,” pointed out Briala.

“Those rebellions usually end up being soundly crushed,” scoffed Nesterin. “And magic isn’t just a _weapon_. Accidents happen on the battlefield, maybe a novice trips and takes a slice out of someone in front, maybe he drops his shield on his foot and breaks his big toe. But mages get possessed by demons, or sometimes the veil tightens and it hits back at you. And an alienage explodes because someone hasn’t been concentrating.”

Nesterin realised that she sounded more than a bit like Vivienne.

“I know that the Dalish are a conservative people,” Briala pressed on. “They’re practically the antithesis of everything progressive, but-

“-My upbringing might inform my attitude but it doesn’t define me. I know the flaws of the Dalish way of living better than anyone,” Nesterin countered hotly.

“You can’t deny you have your own impulses, Lady Herald. And they’re as Dalish anything. Hold your back straighter than a bow. Bend but don’t break. Endure but don’t act. Waiting and suffering until…. _something_ happens. It might not be the _worst_ plan of all time- I guess- but it’s left the Dalish as ignorant and misguided as the rest of us. Maybe much more.”

“Solas took a lot of unnecessary swipes at my family and my culture too,” said Nesterin sharply.

She’d defended her people from him at first, but then she started letting it slide because she was learning not to trust her own prejudices and because she hadn’t realised that Solas saw the world as something so rotten and broken that the only solution was to burn it down and restart it once more.

Then she sighed, pressed her fingers to her temple and said, “I’m sorry, Briala. But I hate this _us_ and _them_ mentality. It’s _our_ world and we all have a stake in it. At least, that’s what I’m trying to remember.”

“I used to think like you,” Briala conceded. “But then so many people did their best to prove me wrong. Then again, I didn’t think I’d ever be standing in an alley learning magic from the Herald of Andraste. Perhaps I need to review the situation.”

Nesterin was about to thank her when, from over the rooftops, came the high metallic clattering of a bell. Briala turned her face upwards and grew tense.

“Templars. We ought to meet them at the gates,” she said grimly. “Since we’re the most high profile elves in all of Orlais, I have no doubt they will be looking for us. We might as well let the people see us submit with our heads held high.”

 _Proud submission? A very city elf impulse,_ Nesterin thought but did not say. But when Briala moved to leave the alleyway, Nesterin grabbed her arm.

“Do any of Val Royeaux’s secret faces exist under the alienage?” she asked.

Briala knew immediately what Nesterin was asking, and she looked disgusted.

“We can’t abandon them.”

“We’re not going to. Do you know of a secret way outside of the alienage?” Nesterin asked again. Briala nodded scepticaly.

“Use it,” Nesterin urged. “Let me meet them at the gates. Let me take any of the blame levelled against us. Gaspard wants you out, surely you know that? You’ll only be abandoning our people if you let him have an excuse.”

“Why would you do that?”

Nesterin was thinking of her old Vallaslin. Undone by Solas in little more than a moment, it had taken Deshanna from dawn until long after night to complete. Mostly, Elgar’nan’s vallaslin was reserved for warriors and hot blooded youths who wanted to look fierce, but Nesterin half wondered if she hadn’t selected the complex, painful blood writing out of some sick fetish for suffering- same as the impulse to silently endure that Briala had recognised in the Dalish.

But it also meant something more.

Half submerged in darkness, half in light, Nesterin had lived for so long with two faces.

“ It’s like you said,” Nesterin told Briala. “You do your work for our people in the shadows but I have to stand in the sun.”

What hung unspoken in the air were the words, _I’m the one who has to get burned._


	30. quand une force irrésistible…

Once again, Nesterin found herself standing in Vivienne's private quarters. The last time she'd been here, it had been a sunny day. The people had been cheering in the courtyard. She'd been washed and scrubbed and dressed like a pretty Orlesian doll with a heavy porcelain arm. This time she was covered in soot and grime, stinking of sweat and grain alcohol. The last time, she'd been the famed Herald of Andraste come home at last. Now she felt like something fished out of a sewer. 

Vivienne wasn’t wearing the habit of the divine this time. Instead, she sat resplendent and dangerous in form-fitting blacks and golds, leaning forwards on her desk with her fingers steeped together. Any mask of pleasantry she might have worn was gone, replaced by a look of genuine anger.

“You lied to me,” spat Vivienne. Her anger, Nesterin could deal with, but what stung the most was the tremulous edge of disappointment in her voice.

“It’s Val Royeaux. Everyone lies.”

“You knew for months what was happening with the elves and you said nothing. _You_ ,” she gesticulated with one arm as though her body could barely contain her fury, contracting her left hand into a firm claw to try and keep at least some semblance of the hard, icy cold exterior she always wore. “I could understand if you’d been some arrow slinging, axe throwing bumpkin from Highever. But you’re a _mage_. You of all people should have understood the consequences of trying to keep something like this concealed.”

Nesterin said nothing, forcing herself to keep her head level and her chin up.

“And now elves are dead,” Vivienne went on. “The alienage is in tatters and we are no closer to finding Solas. What were you hoping to achieve?”

Nesterin didn’t need reminders of her own failure. She didn’t need Vivienne holding the events of tonight over her head because she could _hear_ them. In the back of her head, with all of the other failures and all of the other souls and sorrows.

She kept her stony silence, still looking at Vivienne, unable to trust herself to talk and with very little in the way of an argument to counter the accusations against her.

“Nothing?” Vivienne prompted. “Well congratulations. Because, truly, _nothing_ of any use to anyone has come out of your actions.”

When Vivienne swung at the enemy with her spirit blade, she swung low, she swung precisely and she hit hard. Her words were no different. Nesterin pictured her feet like heavy stones, keeping her tethered to the floor. She gritted her teeth together and forced out her words in a staccato rhythm, making sure to taste her consonants,

“My. Whole. World. Has. Been. Turned . Upside. Down. Vivienne. I needed time to _think,_ ”

Vivienne laughed bitterly. “But you _aren’t_ thinking, darling. Drinking, certainly. Which is only two letters off, I suppose.”

There were things, Nesterin thought wildly, there were things that she could say to hurt Vivienne too. She could point out that it was perfectly clear that Vivienne was never going to listen to what she wanted to do about Solas. She could point out that it was perfectly clear that Vivienne only ever wanted to use _her_ name and _her_ accomplishments as Inquisitor like some kind of life raft for her sinking, stinking chantry.

She could get even lower, she could be cold and spiteful and she could twist the knife in deep. She could remind Vivienne that it wasn’t _her_ fault that the other woman’s election to the seat of the divine had been a disaster and that the humans of Orlais loved a Dalish mage who’d literally fallen out of the woods with no idea how to play the game so much more than they loved her. Especially when Vivienne was completely the _last_ person Nesterin would have chosen to be divine.

But the words wouldn’t accomplish anything, no matter how psychologically purging they might be . All they’d do was cause more burning and more wreckage. Nesterin bit down and she bundled them up, feeling the same building of nausea that she had described to Briala.

“Maker, you’re drunk right now,” Vivienne stated, staring at Nesterin, mouth slightly agape. “You reek worse than a tannery.”

It was pointless trying to deny it. She couldn’t even feel ashamed of it. Nesterin shrugged her shoulders.

Vivienne glared at her, her eyes a wild blizzard of anger.Then she stood up sharply, and stalked across the room towards Nesterin.

For one horrified second, Nesterin was sure that Vivienne was either going to slap her or draw her spirit blade. She tensed up her body in preparation and Vivienne grabbed her by the shoulders. They stood like that for approximately five seconds. And then Vivienne pulled Nesterin into a hug.

The heady scent of jasmine oil overtook her. Vivienne’s arms were strong, and Nesterin had no idea whatsoever what to do with her hand. If she raised it, if she hugged Vivienne back and she took a moment to actually find comfort in it, Nesterin was sure she would end up shattering into a thousand pieces.

She settled for leaving her hand hanging uselessly by her side, waiting for the hug to be over with. 

“The chantry will always be grateful for your exceptional service during your time as Inquisitor and I will do my best with your legacy because you deserve to be celebrated for all of your sacrifices,” said Vivienne when she pulled away, going back to sit down at her desk.

From a fine glass decanter, Vivienne poured a liquid into a glass and handed it to Nesterin.

“What’s this?” she sniffed it slightly, it was odorless and colourless.

“It’s water...it’s a novel idea, I know, but you can actually drink this instead of wine. Try it. Maybe you'll get a taste for it." 

Nesterin took the glass and drank deeply from it, conceding that she at least owed Vivienne the courtesy of trying to sober up.

“As I say, you deserve to be remembered,” Vivienne went on. “You were a hero when the world needed you. But you’re tired and now it’s time for you to rest. Cullen offered you a place to stay didn’t he? I suggest that you take it. Get well again. Enjoy some peace.”

 _Peace_ . Vivienne couldn’t really believe that Nesterin would find _Peace_ of all things if she left for Ferelden. Maybe, after everything, the only person who had really, truly, understood her side of the story was mad old Gaelbana from the woods. She knew there was no rest to be found, she knew there was no end to the running....

 _I would avoid taking the side of the woman who hung herself in the woods- it makes you sound crazy,_ Amaril pointed out.

_Whereas listening to the voices in my head is completely and totally sane?_

“I’m not ill,” Nesterin told Vivienne. “I’m fine. I _can_ help. I know I can.”

She couldn’t afford to waste any time trekking across Ferelden. She didn’t want to leave the White Spire and stop the dreaming. She might still find something at the University. Things weren't totally hopeless. Not yet. Not if she worked harder and thought harder and just had a little more time...

“You can take a place with Cullen or I can have you arrested for treason,” said Vivienne primly.

Nesterin considered the best argument she could give Vivienne to convince her to stay. Something like: she needed her Herald, to rally the people, especially the elves in the alienages, but Vivienne cut her off before she got a chance to speak,

“I really don’t want to have to arrest you for treason, darling. Please don’t make this harder than it already is.”

Looking over at the divine, Nesterin felt the proverbial pressure of the rock on one side and the hard place on the other.

“What about my sisters? I can’t leave them in the city without my protection.”

“Can’t they go back to clan Lavellan? Or you have a home in Kirkwall. Apparently it’s lovely.”

“What about the alienage?”

“It’s apostate mages are my jurisdiction, I’ll see that they are properly taught and properly managed by the chantry. We want the same things. We always wanted the same things.”

 _None of this is what I wanted_ , thought Nesterin.

“And what about Solas?”

“What has happened to the alienage is, as far as I'm concerned, a declaration of intent. He’ll have to surface eventually," said Vivienne confidently. "And when he does, the whole might of an empire will rise up to face him.”

At this, Nesterin began to feel as if her entire stomach was full of stones. Her head swam and her limbs ached and she felt as if she were wading underwater. Resisting the nausea and the headache washing over her, Nesterin pinched the bridge of her nose and said, calmly and firmly:

“No."

“No?”

“You can put me in jail or lock me away in the White Spire, but I’m not giving up and I’m not going to Ferelden.”

Vivienne sighed, her face awash with so much regret and disappointment.

“We had to save _every single_ captured villager from that quarry in Empress du Lion,” Divine Victoria muttered bitterly to herself, and then, louder, she said, “ I am exhausted by you sometimes, Nesterin. I genuinely don’t know how you can stand it."

She stood up and stalked towards the door, and Nesterin knew that she was calling in the guards.

In preparation, Nesterin placed her feet apart, thinking of them as two anchors to keep her rooted to the ground. Three of them had brought her in, and she imagined the same three would bring her out. Loosely, she plotted her best cause of action to get as far as she possibly could with as little damage as she possibly could. If she hit the doorway with a disruption field, that would slow them down long enough for her to fade step through anyone trying to block her way out. 

“I’m sorry, Vivienne I can’t promise that I’ll go easily," Nesterin warned, her route pretty much mapped out. 

But Vivienne had made it her business to know Nesterin, right from the days of the Inquisition. The Divine shook her head sadly.

"Oh I think you will. You just drank magebane, darling.”

Three Templars entered just as Nesterin realised that the swimming sensation had come from her severed connection to the fade. She stood helplessly as the soldiers surrounded her. 

“Escort her to Olympe Giron’s house” Vivienne instructed the soldiers. To Nesterin she added, “Pack up your things and get some rest. Cullen will be there to meet you tomorrow morning.”

* * *

 

She threw up most of the magebane on the way down from the Grand Cathedral. The twin poisons of the potion and the grain alcohol commingled and hit the grand stone steps with a wet splatter. Coughing through a mouthful of stomach bile, Nesterin wrapped her arm around her stomach, groaning as her escorts winced and took a step back from her.

When she thought of walking up those same steps months ago, dressed in the finest clothing, stepping to the sound of bells and cheers, she couldn’t help but let out a low, bitter laugh.

At Olympe’s townhouse, Nesterin found her sisters still awake. The sight of them, sitting cross legged on the dining table, murmuring to themselves and drinking mugs of hot milk, made her stomach ache slightly. She knew she that should go and comfort them about the events in the alienage and that she should prepare them for tomorrow...but all she really wanted to do was slip off quietly and sit alone in the dark for the next few hours. 

Nesterin took a breath and gave a quick tap on the open door to alert them to her presence. 

When they saw her, Mirwen immediately sprang onto the floor as Bel drew her knees into her chest and looked at her with a haunted, worried expression.

“Nesterin! Nesterin what happened in the alienage?” demanded Mirwen.”

“The ground shook and the air felt strange and then I heard they were burning everyone alive inside,” shivered Bel.

The two of them together seemed to be speaking at an almost supernatural speed and Nesterin pulled out her chair, sinking into it heavily. 

“The people in the alienage needed help, so I went there," she said slowly. "No one was letting anyone burn alive, Bel, I promise. Then I went for a meeting with the Divine.”

“Is it terrible in there? Was it a bomb? Was it...you know, like with _Herran?_ ” asked Mirwen.

Bel put her hands up to her face and tears threatened to fall. Nesterin leaned across the table and placed her hand on her sister’s back to try and steady her.

“Val Royeaux is a dangerous place.I think we’d all be much safer if we left,” she lied. She couldn’t bring herself to admit to her sisters that she was being thrown out of the city for being a worse-than-ineffective drunk.

At this, Bel pulled back, astonished.

“You want to leave? But you just said people needed help.”

“They do. But it doesn’t have to be my help specifically.”

That, at least, was what everyone was always telling her. Maybe this time she would actually learn.

“I don’t understand,” said Bel.

“I can’t help everyone, Little Many. So I’m choosing to help you,” she tried to say with a smile.

It wasn't true, but it _should_ have been the truth. She was sure they had regretted choosing to follow her to Val Royeaux many times over the last few lonely, confusing months. Perhaps the only one of them who’d ever had any sense was Alifanon, the eldest sister, the practical sister, who’d stayed in her small world with her baby and her Aravals and someone who loved her.

The world was not very kind to people dreaming they’d find anything better.

“I don't think you should do that,” said Bel, frowning.

“Yeah, we should stay. We could help rebuild the alienage. City elves are our people too, aren’t they?” agreed Mirwen. “And we could show anybody who came into magic late that it needn’t be something they’re afraid of.”

“Anyone who’s caught with magic will have to go into the circle. That’s how it works,” sighed Nesterin. “But I thought you’d be pleased. You’re always saying that I keep on leaving you all alone.”

“I don’t,” shrugged Mirwen. “Do you, Bel?”

“We can take care ourselves. Quite well actually,” nodded Bel. Nesterin was about to argue when she spotted the flash of a blade being pulled out from Bel’s hip.

It was just a simple Dalish dagger. Almost all of Clan Lavellan carried one and it was usually presented to them after their vallaslin was complete. It was used for all sorts of purposes- from carving wood to cutlery. Hunters learned to fling their daggers at wild pigs and rams, healers used theirs’ to cut strips of bark to make poultices. When Nesterin first came to the Inquisition as a prisoner, she had contemplated using her own knife to severe her arm and get away. It was now buried somewhere at the bottom of the snow that covered Haven’s grave.

Bel’s dagger was a compliment to her mark of ghilan'nain, decorated with the simple silhouette of three grazing halla along the handle. She pulled it out and turned swiftly, aiming her knife at Mirwen’s head.

As the dagger flew through the air, Mirwen raised her hand and made a grabbing action at seemingly nothing. The sensation that Nesterin felt was dulled by the magebane but she felt sure she could make out the ripples of the fade shifting around her like a stone being dropped into the water. She caught the scent of  damp leaves and the promise of rain as Mirwen’s barrier manifested like a pane of glass dropping in front of her face. The knife hit it and clattered to the floor before the barrier disappeared.

So Elandrin had actually been a half-decent teacher, Nesterin conceded reluctantly.

Mirwen beamed. 

“Impressive,” said Nesterin.

“You see," said Bel. "We know what we're doing. And anyway it's only really Laisa who complains about you.”

“ _Bel._ You can’t tell her that.”

“It isn’t a secret,” Bel pointed out.

“No, it isn’t,” Nesterin agreed. Laisa’s reaction was the one she was looking the least forward to. But she’d have to get it over with eventually. “Is she up?”

Mirwen and Bel exchanged a look. A look really rather similar to the last time they’d tried to lie to her. 

“Where’s Laisa?” she repeated, sighing and then putting her hand to her head. She was tired, her mouth tasted like vomit, her hands were dirty from the rubble of the alienage and magebane was still working its way through her system. She was well and truly not in the mood. “Fenedhis, what now? Bel?”

“No, no it’s fine. She’s asleep,” Mirwen interrupted. "Just go and see her in the morning." 

“I’m talking to Bel.”

And Bel couldn’t have looked more guilty if she tried. Glancing helplessly from Mirwen to Nesterin, she began, “Everything….is...fine...I will...go….get her?”

“Why...are you... saying it so...weirdly?”

Rather than bothering to come up with a good excuse, Bel took a sharp intake of breath and went running off into the hallway. Without missing a beat, Nesterin started after her, swearing to herself as she did so.

After living a comfortable, sedentary lifestyle in the city, Bel had filled out into an ample and healthy shape. It made her stronger than she had been with Clan Lavellan, but it also made her slow. Nesterin on the other hand, after nights of disturbed sleep, worry and very little appetite had shrunk into something as sharp and brittle as a stack of dry twigs. It made her weaker than she’d ever been in the Inquisition, but she was still quick and determined.

When Bel saw her older sister starting to close the gap, she began to yell,

“Laisa! Elandrin, she’s coming,” before approaching a door and beginning to hammer on it.

When Nesterin reached the door, she pulled Bel aside. Not stopping to think what would be on the other side of it, just anxious to reach it before Bel did, Nesterin yanked open the door.

The room on the other side was dark; someone had closed Olympe’s frilly curtains to block out the streetlamps. As the light filtered in from the hall, Nesterin saw that the room was decorated to Olympe’s usual tastes. The papering on the wall was pink, there were pictures of big eyed animals on the walls and little statutes of Orlesian woman in large dresses were lined up along a white dresser. At the far end of the room was a bed, covered with several little cross-stitched pillows and topped with a frilly peach coloured comforter. And at the top of the bed, Nesterin saw the shape of two naked bodies, intertwined. 

She pulled the door shut immediately and heard cursing on the other side.

By then, Mirwen had already caught up to Bel and both of her sisters stood in the hall looking faintly ill. Nesterin made sure to shoot them a withering look as she counted to ten, listening to the shuffle of sheets and the rummaging for a candle. 

"Go to bed you two," she said firmly. Then she opened the door again.

Elandrin was standing by the bed, wrapped in the frilly peach comforter. It clashed horribly with his brown skin and sharp, regal features and served to emphasise how ridiculous he looked. His face had turned a deep scarlet, right up to his mark of Mythal.

Laisa on the other hand, did not look at all embarrassed. She stood on the opposite side of the bed with her chin up and her back straight. Even after the time Nesterin gave her to collect herself, her body was still as defiantly bare as her face was.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Elandrin stammered.

“What are you talking about, you idiot?” laughed Lasia. “It’s exactly what it looks like.” She crossed her arms over her breasts and then turned to Nesterin. “See, I thought you were the one who told us we had to close doors and knock if we wanted to get into them. Or does that human law not apply to you?”

Nesterin was too incensed to even entertain the idea of giving an answer to that question.

“You need to explain to me what’s going on. Right now,” she said icily.

“No, I don’t think I need to explain anything,” Laisa shot back. “Number One: because I would assume it’s fairly obvious. And Number Two: I don’t owe you any explanations about my own business. Ever.”

It was a fine enough speech. But when Nesterin turned her glare onto Elandrin the effect was ruined somewhat because he immediately caved and admitted,

“I’ve been staying in the alienage!”

Laisa rolled her eyes, but Elandrin went on.

“I told you I would never leave your sisters so I found a room there. We meet for lessons in secret when you aren’t here and I was visiting your sisters this evening. After we all heard the alienage was on lockdown, Laisa offered me…” he struggled to find the correct wording. “A place to stay.”

“And what a place to stay it is,” snarled Nesterin before turning to her sister. “You don’t even _like_ him!”

“That’s not true.”

“You can’t possibly like him. He’s arrogant and a blowhard and he’s too old for you and he doesn’t come from anywhere and you don’t know _anything_ about him!”

“Oh come on, that’s more than a little below the belt,” retorted Elandrin, his embarrassment slowly sliding to offence.

“You aren’t wearing a belt,” Nesterin shot back. “Laisa, this is so childish. Are you seriously having sex with someone just to piss me off?”

Laisa grunted with frustration. She uncrossed her arms and placed them at her hips as she bellowed, “Not. Everything. Is. About. YOU! I love him.” 

Her nose wrinkled up and she bit on her lip, glaring at Nesterin before she added, more softly this time. “We love each other.”

Elandrin took a small step in Laisa's direction and the look that passed between the two of them might have been touching if Nesterin hadn’t been so appalled. If she hadn’t wanted, _so desperately_ , to give the two of them a good swift bashing with a Keeper’s staff.

“Since when?”

“Since he saved me at the Arlathvhen. But you wouldn’t know. You haven’t been here.”

 _That isn't long enough to fall in love with someone_ , Nesterin wanted to argue. But the Arlathvhen had been months and months ago. More than long enough for an entire secret affair to have played out under her nose. Perhaps Nesterin only had herself to blame for the fact that it seemed to have come so out of nowhere. 

“Lady Herald, I really am mortified, honestly...but I-"

“Shut up, Elandrin. Shut up. Or I swear as I stand I will do something I regret,” she hissed to the Keeper without a clan. Sure, the magebane was still in her system but Elandrin didn’t have to know that. And she could always hammer him with something nearby. Maybe one of the little figurines would make a nice set of bruises. “What happened to ‘ _I want to help your sisters, not bed them’_ ? You’re a piece of shit, you know that? _She’s the youngest one_!”

“My age doesn’t come into it,” spat Laisa. “And he’s allowed to change his mind. It’s not dishonesty, it’s called 'being open to change and not-being a bloody minded pig-head arsehole’. Which _you_ could stand to learn a few lessons in." 

“Excuse me?”

 _“_ _Ma banal las halamshir var vhen,”_ muttered Laisa underneath her breath.

Nesterin felt as if she’d been walking along the surface of a frozen lake and the ice had just given way. A rush of cold washed suddenly all across her body and it felt as if a shard of ice had just pierced through her heart.

She was just about to ask her sister where she had learned to say such hurtful, hateful, significant words when, from behind she heard a high pitched, girlish scream.

“Oh Makerth breath. Lady ‘erald, Mademoithelle Laisa! Monthieur Isala!” cried Olympe. She was in her night gown, with her hair in curlers under a bonnet, with her hands covering her eyes.

Honestly, this night was getting to be one bloody thing on top of the other.

“I heard all the noitheth, I thought it might have been Uncle Henri...oh, oh I am tho thorry!” she muttered, trying to find her way out of the room.

Nesterin knew she had to go after her and apologize profusely, or Olympe would probably think that there were all kinds of savage, incestuous Dalish mating rituals going on in her household. But before she did, she turned back to Elandrin and Laisa, saying finally:

"Whatever this is, it’s over. We’re leaving the city tomorrow and Elandrin’s not getting within a mile of you for the rest of your life. I can promise you that.”

 


	31. A Dream of Amaril (3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This a continuation of [A Dream of Amaril (2)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10209791/chapters/29689026) so you may want a refresh of that chapter before you start on this one.

 

Isn’t it strange how different memories can be made from different matter?

I didn’t think about it when I was alive. But now that I am dead, I am learning to pay better attention to the memories that are slowly coming back to me. I see that they are precious thing.  They want attention. They want tending to like pale flowers.

Some of my memories are bundles of sounds, pressed together like a package. Someone whispers something in a dark dormitory room, like _Get away. Your feet are freezing._ And little voices giggle.

Some of my memories grow like a seed from out of a smell. The juices from fat apricots, figs and peaches, bursting fragrant into the air after the first bite.

If I hold onto them, and I try to understand them, I can start to make sense of my life.

The matter of this memory is mud and blood and crying.

I practically start crying the moment they see me. The strange, muddy elves who have snuck into the petitioner’s chamber. But I suppose I was a sensible enough child not to stand there weeping. The moment they look at me, I start running.

This next part is made of sound.

My footfalls: louder than thunder. They slap clumsily against stone. It echoes from high ceilings, reverberated, amplified and almost unceasing.

We’re not supposed to run in the summer house. I half expect one of the servants to emerge from a door and start hissing at me.

And then the sound stops short.

The spirit of Valour steps quietly out of the air in front of me.

I jerk backwards and, from behind, one of the soldiers grabs me by the collar. It’s the woman.

She’s still only really a few striking features threaded together: black curls, pale skin, pale blue eyes. She had a mouth, because it started laughing at me. But what it looked like, I cannot say.

I kick my feet and flail my hands. She laughs harder and she says, I think:

“Easy, scrapper.”

Then she drags me back into the petitioner’s chamber.

I don’t want to go back to the petitioners chamber. It smells of the strangers inside. And I don’t like strangers- especially men. Strange men are hard and tall and closed off. The ones in the petitioner’s chamber are worse than most. I don’t understand their dirty clothes, and I don’t trust the way that they watch me.

Ladies and spirits are softer.

Except for the one with dark curls. She pushes me in front of the Housekeeper and I decide that I hate her.

The Housekeeper looks down at me and sighs:

“It’s only one of the little strays,” she tells the rest of them. And she adds gently, just for me, “Amaril, you’ve been told about this before.”

“Naughty little ones are better off staying in bed. After dark, the wolves come out and start biting,” says my dark haired captor. She bends down to my level and gnashes her teeth in my face.

One of the men laughs. The freckled one with the nearly pink hair.

“Don’t frighten her,” snaps the Housekeeper, flapping her hands at them. “Go for your bath if you must have one. Go…”

The woman with dark hair and the freckled man leave. Felassan and Valour stay. Close to the ragged wolf on the floor.

“You might as well make yourself useful, child. I need water. At least two buckets.”

I nod.

I go to fetch water from what will be my grave. _Children of Death, she is yours to play with…_ says the augur. _my lungs are on fire, I’m twitching and screaming and all I can see in front of my eyes is the swirling darkness at the bottom of the well…_

_Don’t dwell on that now, Amaril. Put yourself back in the petitioners chamber. Look at the floor. Look at him. What is he doing?_

He’s still dying.

A spirit of Charity comes in to help the Housekeeper. It’s one I know- who always  takes the shape of a round nurse. Its form is both diaphanous, comforting, flimsy and sturdy, almost impossibly all at once. The Housekeeper rips fade-touched gossamer out of the air for bandages as Charity boils the water I have fetched with its gentle breath.

The Housekeeper kneels beside the gurney and  pushes aside his black furs to get a good look at the wounds. He mutters and she gasps, shaking her head.

“What is _happening_ down in Tarem’An?”

“A war,” said Felassan gravely.

“A _noble_ war,” the spirit of Valour corrects.

The dying wolf coughs, it’s horrible and dry and rattling. I see one glimpse of shiny, sticky, fleshy stuff somewhere near his abdomen before I turn away and look at a wall.

Charity and the Housekeeper make the room warm with their magic. The air hums pleasantly around us for a little while. Then I hear Felassan say:

“Will he live?”  

I turn around and see the Housekeeper rinsing blood from her hands.

“There’s not much more I can do now,” she says, grimly. She stands up and puts a hand over Felassan’s arm. “Come...let me get you some food, when was the last time you ate?”

“I’ll be fine. I ought to stay.”

“Come,” insists the Housekeeper, looping her arm through Felassan’s so he can’t get away. “Let me make you something sweet. Charity will watch him.”  

“It would be my honour to guard the door,” Valour adds, drawing its spirit-sword. “None shall pass who would wish our squadron commander harm.”

Felassan chuckles lightly, “Yes Valour, you make sure the sarge is safe from the scullery maids.” He pats the spirit on the armour as he lets the Housekeeper lead him away to the kitchens.

Valour stations itself outside. I think they have all forgotten about me. I slide down the wall in the corner and tuck my knees into my chest, watching the heaving breaths of the dying wolf.

He’s filthier than the rest of them put together.

To me, it looks like it would be kinder to just put him outside. From time to time, birds get trapped in the summer house and they panic. They get ruffled, they get frightened, they start pecking at people who just want to help them.

This ruffled up mud-monster is going to hurt people if they don’t put him out to die.

Charity is still kneeling on the floor, letting the injured soldier rest his head against its lap. It strokes and soothes his tangled knot of hair gently. It makes cooing noises like a dove and then begins to sing:

_Soft in the valley, love_

_Soft by the stream_

_Softer than whispers, love_

_Softer than dreams_

I don’t remember if I ever had a brother or a sister. I don’t remember what my own mother looks like. And yet...the spirit’s song lingers.

Perhaps this part of the memory is made of matter beyond anything mortal.

I go closer, so that I can hear the song. It sounds nice. Like something a mother would sing to her child. I am so lonely in the summer house. Lonely without the light of the sun and the high walls all around me. I miss someone singing to me. I miss the warmth of someone’s touch.

I miss it now too. Even lost whispers of the dead are allowed to be lonely.

Did I ever love someone, I wonder? I hope not.

It is one of the greatest hurts: to be loved and to be left.

But to be loved and then forgotten?

I can hardly imagine the agony of it.

As Charity sings, I begin to grow tired. The prospect of curling into a little ball on the stone floor, listening to the spirit’s lullaby becomes most attractive. On my hands and knees, I crawl towards the spirit, instinctively seeking out it’s womblike warmth. I want to lie down beside it.

A pale hand shoots out and grabs me by the wrist.

Grey eyes snap open like a ghost or a revenant as the soldier stares at me.

I let out a squeal of panic and try to shake him loose, but his grip hurts my bones and he pulls me close.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” he says in a low desperate voice.

I know nothing of the dead yet. But his wide eyes and sunken, waxy face tugs at me deep somewhere within. It’s the same, strange, primordial reaction I will have to the rotting corpses in the temple after Mythal is slain.

Fear of too-natural-unnatural things leaves me frozen, unable to move or speak or cry. All I can do is lightly whimper: “ _Ow, ow, ow._ ”

Charity puts its hand over the soldier’s and pushes it down gently, making him release me. He claws at Charity’s arm and struggles on the floor, shouts “No! No!” twice and breathes like a drowning man.

Charity holds him firm. It begins to rock him as it continues the song:

_The caged birds are crying,_

_The willow is sighing_

_A darkness is stirring_

_But mine own babe is smiling_

The soldier goes limp, his breathing slows. Then I hear that he is whispering the words of the song too:

_“Softly, love_

_Sweetly, love_

_Softly, softly, softly….”_

When the song finishes, he starts weeping. It’s a horrible, low, broken sound. It fills me with the kind of heavy black dread that only a child can feel at the sight of a grown person brought so low.

“W-would you like some water?” I offer meekly. Even though bruises have begun to form where he gripped my arm, I can only pity him.

Charity looks up at me and beams. When it nods, I run back to get the second water bucket which has not been tainted with blood.

I cast about for a cup or a goblet, but he plunges one muddy hand into the water, splashing as much as he can into his mouth, drinking and gulping like a savage animal.

Before he can hurt me again, I run back into my corner, slipping down the wall and pulling my knees into my chest.

Sated, he falls back into Charity’s lap. He puts his hand to his chest, feels at the gossamer bandages and breathes heavily.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, staring at the ceiling. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

It takes me a moment to realise he’s talking to me. I don’t want to answer because I am _still_ frightened of him and I feel much safer being quiet in my corner.

But then he tries to pull himself up, balancing on one arm as he looks straight at me.

“I’m not frightened,” I lie.

The soldier smiles faintly, and looks like he’s going to say something else. But then he goes, if possible, whiter still.

A look of horror crosses over his eyes and he leans over the side of the gurney and begins to retch.

His whole body shakes and I can practically feel my vocal chords and throat being stretched and strained as he dry heaves.

And then the dry heaves graduate to wet ones. Nasty brown clots of blood mixed with bile hit the pretty golden tiles of the petitioner’s chamber. The vomit has the same consistency as wet sand and if I didn’t know any better, I could swear there were _rocks_ in it.

“Stop it. Stop it!” I shriek. The sound of retching makes me feel like I’m going to throw up too. And the smell is just unbearable.

They were all going to be so cross with me if I broke him. I really did think the water would _help_ ….

“Good,” says Charity. It strokes big circles around his back. “Get it all out.”  

Soon the vomiting goes back to dry coughs. Then he falls silent, still trembling slightly.

“I’ve scared you now,” he says thickly, opening one bleary eye at me.

I nod. My face contorts and I put my hand up to my eyes as a long squeal slips out of my throat.

“No, no don’t cry. What’s your name?”

“Amaril.”

“Do you live here?”

I nod, my hands still over my eyes. I hear him slump back onto the gurney, all of his strength having failed him.

“Then you are like me. We are kin,” he whispers.

I think about telling him that I do not want to be kin with somebody who is so strange and scary and makes the room smell _so_ bad. But I think that it might be a bit rude.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” he goes on. I pull my hands from my eyes and see that he is lying on his back again, staring at the ceiling. His grey eyes have taken on a glassy quality. What he says next comes out weak and a little slurry. And it doesn’t make much sense:

“Do you know the Atrium? And the mosaic on the floor? There’s treasure buried underneath one of the tiles. If you find the right one, and you lift it in the secret way, then you can keep the treasure.”

“I’ll bring it to you,” I offer.

“Yes. I’d like that….” he trails off, shutting his eyes. He reaches underneath him and tugs at his ragged black coat. Turning, he pulls the furs over his body and becomes a wolf once more.

Charity puts its hand on my shoulders.

“Tomorrow,” it says firmly. “Let him sleep tonight. Come back tomorrow.”

_Did you ever find the treasure, Amaril?_

These are my dreams, you aren’t supposed to be in them. And you certainly aren’t allowed to start making requests.

_But did you?_

I’m thinking….I’m trying to remember….

Yes. I did.

After I woke up, I went to the Atrium. It’s pointless having an Atrium when the sky is so dark. It was morning- though you’d never know it. I had to fumble around casting little green beads of light all across the floor.

I don’t remember what the mosaic represented but I was looking for the secret tile. It took me a bit of time to find. There was a dragon or a beast or a gryphon  in the corner of the mosaic. For a joke, someone had taken out it’s eye and replaced it with a silly painted stone.

So I took out the stone and started digging into the dirt underneath it. And lo, there was the treasure. In a small leather pouch.

_Did you look inside?_

Not then. I went back to the petitioner's chamber first. It wasn’t my treasure, I thought the right thing to do would be to return it.

Only, when I got there, the Housekeeper was washing down the floors. I don’t know how you people can stand to do it by hand, using the fade takes much less time and makes everything look much cleaner.

_Where did he go?_

That’s what I asked. Then the Housekeeper said:

“Underground. They had to go back to the war.”

And she looked so sad.  

I suppose they were worried about being punished for deserting. Or they were worried they would be needed.

I wouldn’t have gone back so quickly...not in a million years, not after seeing what war could do to a person. It all seems so stupid all these years later.

None of us _had_ to die, not like your quick children. We didn’t ever have die if we didn’t want to.

But after that war, I suppose the people got too much of a taste for it. Both for dying and for killing.

_But what about the treasure?_

Oh that. It was a bit silly, really.

There were only marbles in the bag. Just a set of little green marbles.


	32. 'One Last Fuck 'em!'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took a little longer. This chapter sort of spiralled out of control. But I didn’t want to split it up because it’s very much a self-contained thing. Think of it as a fun side-quest...That sort of ended up being a horrifying dive into Nesterin’s depression.

Much like the shifting of the veil, the nature of this dream with Amaril felt different. Instead of occupying Amaril’s eyes as a silent spectator to the tableau’s unfolding in front of her, this time Nesterin was more aware of herself than ever. She found that she could ask Amaril questions and that she could force the focus of the dream in a way that _she_ wanted.  And when she saw him, the desperate ache at the heart of the memory was all her own.

 _We’re not in the White Spire,_ Nesterin pointed out to Amaril, _We never dreamt together outside of the White Spire before._

_Maybe I’m getting stronger?_

_Or maybe the veil is getting weaker…._

Nesterin resolved to start writing down the dreams. She would record them and see if she could put them into some sort of timeline. But there were such great swathes of time missing still. She could not understand the movement from Mythal’s house to calling it a temple, for one. Nor did she clearly see the movement from a dying soldier to a revolutionary, to a harbinger of destruction.

Rolling over in bed, Nesterin became dimly aware of another person beside her. She could hear their breath and feel the weight of their body against the mattress.

At first, she suspected one of her sisters- most likely Bel, so she was not necessarily startled. But when she opened her eyes, she was surprised to see, instead of the familial brown, grey irises staring back at her.

They crinkled up with a wicked joy. Nesterin heard a deep intake of breath and then was blasted with a bellowing, “RAWR!!!!”

Nesterin flinched. Her head was still aching from the night before and the noise did not help. Sweet, biscuity smells hit her nostrils and made her feel nauseous.

“Sera,” she said simply.

“What?” retorted the elf in her bed. “What? You not gonna scream or yell or nothing? Fun as a frigging funeral, as always, Shovel Face.”

Sera used to call Nesterin ‘Shovel Face’ to take the piss out of her vallaslin. One night, over the light of the fire and Blackwall’s meat and potato stew , Sera had peered closely at her face and declared:

“You’re hiding something. What is it? Big fat hairy mole? Nasty scar? Goggly eyes that don’t look in the right direction?”

Nesterin laughed, “What if it’s all three? Or maybe it’s nothing at all and my vallaslin is just more important to me than my vanity?”

Sera considered it, but then decided: “Nah. I bet you’re a right Shovel Face under there.”

Nesterin had been a liar and a self-deceiver of course. Suffering and abnegation _was_ her vanity, especially before she knew the proper meaning of the words.

She liked to think of her Vallaslin as a perfect fit for a Keeper in waiting- first of all the gods, the child of the sun, who compelled the earth the create the birds, and the beasts and all of the green things. But on some level, she knew that she’d picked her vallaslin because it took ages to finish, it was elaborate, it was obvious and because those great black swirls and shadowy spaces made her look more Dalish than anyone.

 _It’s our blood that binds us to the will of the masters,_ the Well of Sorrows told her.

She'd thought of Deshanna, her mother, her Aunt Illan, Alifanon and Bel. All of them bright, all of them beautiful, all of them with their backs straighter than bows. It made her sick to think of someone trying to _own_ them and _bind_ them. 

It made her sicker still to think of her her own blood, binding her for nothing but all the wrong reasons. 

“Your elfy dealies…” Sera asked, after the Vallaslin was gone.

“They weren’t what I thought,” she explained. “They were slave markings.”

Sera laughed and it felt like being stabbed in the chest.

“The Dalish and their Fancy dress! I knew it. All their stupid faces.”

“It’s _so, so_ stupid,” Nesterin affirmed.

Her bare face in the mirror was like looking at layers upon layers of failure: Dalish pride, wrapped up in her own idiotic intentions, wrapped up in a fallen people’s tragedies. Sera would probably have described it as a terrible onion of fuck-upery.  

“We have to do better.”

“And you weren’t even a Shovel Face after all. You’re _pretty_ , you dumb-face idiot. Fancy hiding it under that great big ugly mark of elfy wrongness! If I was Solas, I would have made you get rid of it friggin’ months ago.”

Nesterin bowed her head low and put her hand over her eye, covering one half of her face. Every instinct she had was turned towards hiding away. She wanted to lock herself in her room, retreat into the woods and run away until the questions about Crestwood had died down.

But her bare face had left her as raw and exposed as a bleeding, open wound.

“Hey. No. Oi, oi,” Sera said frantically. “Stop doing your dreary, bleary   _feelings_ all over the place. I was _trying_ to be nice. Fine! You can still be a Shovel Face. Better?”

“This is a weird room,” Sera announced in the present. She jumped up out of the bed and started to roam around, inspecting Olympe’s little girly touches to the decor.  “These your frilly bits? Heh. Frilly Bits. You a professional old Biddy now?”

“Hello, Sera. How are you?”

“ _Shit_ ,” Sera declared. “After Coryphyshitty and Quanari wotsits I was bored in Denerim. But now I’m very not bored. Very, _very_ not bored.  And that’s getting boring too. So I need you to help me with something.”

 _She’s changed too_ , said Amaril, _surely? I can sense it all around her. She’s reaching out into the beyond alright._

Nesterin sighed. This was going to be the worst one yet.

“Let me guess: You’re feeling something you’ve never felt before? Things are changing inside of you and you don’t know what to do with those feelings?”

“Bloody hell. Are you getting flirty?” Sera crowed. “Thanks but no thanks, Shovel Face.”

“I meant the magic. Look, Sera, I’m going to tell you straight. I can help you to control it, but I can’t take it away. Not yet.”

“What!?” asked Sera, disgusted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh come on. Even if it wasn’t happening to you, you must have heard something from your friends.”

“Well yeah…. I hear all kinds of something...but that’s not me. That’s elfy stuff!”

_Either your friend is very stupid and she doesn’t know she’s an elf. Or your friend is very clever and she knows that she’s broken._

“It doesn’t have to be scary,” Nesterin tried.

Swiftly, Sera picked up her bow from its place resting beside the  bed. In about half a heart-beat the arrow was nocked and aimed directly at Nesterin’s face.

“Knock it off or I’ll put an arrow in your eye!”

 _It’s the first one. It’s definitely the first one,_ said Amaril.

Sinking back into the pillows, Nesterin raised her hands without much enthusiasm.

“Like I said, elfy stuff,” Sera repeated, lowering her bow. “I leave that up to your lot, okay? That’s not what I’m talking about. I need you for something different. Here in Val Royeaux.”

Nesterin sighed. “You have exceptionally poor timing, I’m afraid. I’m leaving today.”

“ _You have exceptionally poor timing, I’m afraid._ Oh, just talk normal. And put it off a bit. Just one thing. It’ll be fun.”

“I’m never any fun Sera, remember? I have to pack and get ready to leave. I’m sorry, I don’t have time to throw rotten tomatoes at ladies coming out of the opera.”

“It’s not tomatoes. When have I ever thrown tomatoes? Pie? Maybe. Bees? Better. But this isn’t tomatoes or pie _or_ bees. It’s bad guy stomping and little people saving. Arrows all over and someone probably getting their head kicked in!”

“No.”

“Come on, Shovel Face! You know you’re dying to go full Red Jenny….Especially if you’re leaving Orlais. One last fuck em, right? Because it’s you. Because you’re the biggest little person I know.”

There was probably a compliment in there somewhere...

“No, Sera. I’ll get in trouble,”Nesterin argued, shaking her head.

“With who? You’re the Lady Big Cheese. Just say Andraste made you do it and they can’t say shit.”

Sera’s disbelief indicated how long she’d been out of the city. She didn’t know that Nesterin was basically just a statue in the Grand Cathedral now. She had about as much agency as a portrait or a paragraph in a history book. There was still power in her narrative, yes- that’s why Vivienne had wanted her in the city in the first place- but it was no longer her’s to wield or control.

And with that thought, Nesterin realised that she had basically convinced herself that _yes,_ she would quite like to commit ‘One Last Fuck’em’.

“Okay. I’ll bite. Tell me more. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to do it.”

* * *

 It did mean that Nesterin was going to do it.

As far as a ‘One Last Fuck’em’ went, this one was pitched perfectly. Sera had heard, through the usual complex web of Red Jenny friends and operatives, of a racketeering business running out of a mercantile district in the city. The people were poor humans- bakers, grocers, tobacconists and the like- and they were being bullied by a gang to give over money for the vaguest promise of ‘protection’. One of the shop owners- a milliner- had met her payment, but now the gang was insisting she was short. So she’d enlisted Red Jenny’s help.

Now, when the gang came to collect, _She_ would be waiting for them.

It was something black and white and easy. With any luck, Nesterin would be back at Olympe’s before anyone even knew she was gone. And at least this way she wouldn’t feel like such an astonishing failure before she left for Cullen’s sanctuary.

The district was miles better than the alienage, but it was just as far removed from the wealthier shopping boulevards of Val Royeaux. The storefronts were brightly painted but they had grown shabby. Here and there, gold lettering peeled away from shop signs and some of the front stoops were chipped and broken. It was the sort of place where you’d be able to get a good meat and cheese pastry but there would be no frilly Orlesian cakes in sight.

When they came through the door, the Milliner almost jumped out of her skin at the sight of them. She was quite large: both tall and ample, wearing a neat but inexpensive dress, a mask, and two dead birds on a hat. They were a pair of starlings, both a male and a female and they sat on top of the brim of the hat- stuffed. stupid, decorative and sad. Nesterin thought, as she often did, that human fashion was a strange, barbaric thing.

“Oh! Please, Maker protect me!” squealed the Milliner when Nesterin and Sera entered. “For mercy’s sake I just need two more days.”

“It’s alright,” said Nesterin. “We’re just here to buy a hat. Our Auntie Jenny sent us to look for one. Right?”

She turned to Sera, who picked up a fussy little yellow fascinator, plopped it down on her head and began to cackle.

“You?” asked the Milliner, looking at Sera and then down at Nesterin’s missing arm sceptically.

“Mainly her,” said Nesterin, with a nod towards Sera, now trying to arrange several fascinators like a crown around her skull. Not looking back, Sera patted the dagger at her hip.  “I’m more of a support kind of person. I might only have one arm but I can still carry the bags and such,” Nesterin finished.

Several minutes passed as they browsed the wares of the Milliner’s shop with no sign of the racketeering gang. Nesterin began to feel a little anxious as she checked the time on a pretty little cuckoo clock above the shop counter. Cullen and the guards would probably be arriving soon to pick her up. The Divine might even come, to personally see that she was going...  

Nesterin tried to put it far from her mind.

Fortunately, there was not much more time to wait. The bell above the door clattered, and the window pane trembled as three figures stepped into view

Nesterin backed towards the side as they entered, browsing a display and trying to look like just another customer. They were all male, all dressed in dirty breeches and long shabby overcoats. Around each of their hips was tied a blue sash, they all wore leather masks and carried weapons. The first to enter held heavy a bludgeon which he twirled and slapped against his palm threateningly. The two that flanked him carried ropes and knives. All three of them had the scrawny malnourished look of city elves and all three of them displayed their sharp ears clearly.

Disappointment sank in her like a stone.

They slid in like an ooze, bringing with them an oily smell, regarding the Milliner with darting eyes under their masks.

“Your Shemlen tax, Madame Bertin. Where is it?” demanded the elf with the bludgeon.

The Milliner shot a nervous glance over at Nesterin and Sera.

“I don’t ‘ave any more money for you. I told you, I am paid for the month,” she stated. She was human and these were elves, so her voice held more than a degree of disdain. But she couldn’t mask the trembling beneath it.

“You people,” spat the elf with the baton. “This is our land. Not yours. It is up to us to decide whether or not you ‘ave paid your dues proper.”

Nesterin tried to look as inconsequential as she could but a curl of annoyance had started to flare up inside of her. _Shemlen tax_ ? _This is our land and not yours?_

Another of them stepped forwards too. This one had long, dirty, yellow hair framing his jaw. He leaned on the counter, caressing his dagger as he said, “Yeah. And Lady Briala duzzent take kindly to uppity shems walkin’ round like the own the place.”

Nesterin fought not to let out a noise of complete shock.

“This was supposed to be our capital before the ‘umans took it. Our ‘omeland after the Long Walk.”

She finally snapped, and wheeled around from her place, snapping:

“That’s Halamshiral, you dolt!”

They stopped looking at Madame Bertin and turned instead to her.

“Our people built _Halamshiral_ at the end of the Long Walk. The name literally means ‘the end of the journey’. _Dirthara-ma_ , who taught you history?!"

 _And who taught YOU history, Nesterin?_  Amaril pointed out.  _I bet the Dalish never told you that context is everything when it comes to 'halam'. Before the war came, we never had need for a word that only ever meant 'end'._

The leader of the gang looked nonplussed for a minute, but he recovered quickly, waving his stick in her face. “I’ll bash your brains in if you’re not careful, Missy. Scram!”

“Is it time to start the head kicking yet,” Sera yelled hopefully, from her place by the door. Nesterin held up her hand for a little more time.

“Why did you say you worked for Marquise Briala?”

“Because we do.”

“No you don’t,” Nesterin insisted.

“But we do.”

“No. You don’t.”

“Yeah-”

“-Briala is Marquise of all of the Dales,” Nesterin interrupted, seeing that their argument was only going around and around in circles. “She’s not getting involved in back alley racketeering.”

“Oh yeah, then what’s this?” asked the leader of the gang, scrabbling at his collar with filthy fingers.

He pulled out a chain and held up the ring that that was at the end of it. It was not ornate but it looked relatively expensive and there was a coat of arms upon into. She saw a heart wrapped in twisted thorns but did not know the significance of it.

“I have no idea,” said Nesterin coolly.

“It’s a favour. With Lady Briala’s seal. Means she favours us, non?”

It didn’t make any sense. Nesterin knew that it couldn’t be true- the gang and the seal was so obvious that it couldn’t be anything more than a set-up surely? The ends were obvious- hurting human and elf relations, making Briala look like a racist bully, but who would want that? And why would these elves want to help?

 _For money, obviously_ Amaril pointed out.

“You’re clearly lying. But you also aren’t going to get any more money out of this lady. I suggest you tell us who you are really working for and then you leave this district alone.”

“What! _Ugh_...less talky, more stabby,” Sera groaned.

“Why would we do that?” asked the leader of the gang, he stepped closer to Nesterin, his voice got lower and he placed the business end of his bludgeon  against her chest.

“Because I’m asking you to.”

“Because _you are asking me to_?” repeated the leader. He took his bludgeon from off her chest and patted the stump of her arm. Nesterin gritted her teeth. He laughed and the rest of his men followed suit. “And who the fuck are you, Stumpy?”

Deciding that diplomacy had all but broken down, Nesterin tipped her head to the side, saying sweetly:

“I'm the Herald of Andraste. Say your prayers”

The spell she cast was her own modification of a fade step. After she’d learned to pass through physical forms, either to absorb and channel some of their energies or to leave them with a nasty bite of chill, she’d started to wonder if such things could be done in isolation. Like moving an arm or a leg through the fade and nothing more.  

The answer to this had turned out to be an emphatic _yes_.

Nesterin focused on her remaining arm sinking into the fade, able to move through the matter of this world with ease. She reached towards the leader of the gang’s arm, slipped inside of it like passing a knife through gelatine and she gave his humerus a nice squeeze.

A crunch filled the air. Nesterin pulled back her hand. The elf in front of her screamed in agony, gripping his broken arm.

“Say your prayers. Amazing!” Sera giggled, as the other two elves flew at Nesterin.  “Let me try one.”

“Last chance to leave,” Nesterin warned the gang quickly, as she parried a blow to her face with the hilt of her undrawn Spirit Blade.

They did not leave.

With all the wildness of a natural disaster, Sera flung herself into the fray, popping up to punch one of the other elves in the face.

“I'm Sera. Sera your prayers!” she crowed as he stepped back, dazed.

Nesterin fade-stepped to one side, as the one with the broken arm roared and charged at her. There was a large clatter as he ran head first into a glass display cabinet filled with floppy satin caps.

“You can't just say my thing!” said Nesterin, emerging from the ether and bashing the elf Sera was in a fist fight with from behind with the hilt of her spirit blade.  

“What? I changed it!”

“Yes, but barely. You do know it mostly works with me because of the chantry stuff?”

Sera just blew her a raspberry.

They made short work of the racketeering gang, leaving them twitching and bleeding and groaning on the floor. Sera had knocked one unconscious, he lay on the floor with an arrow in his arse and the leader was up against the wall, crying a little bit as he poked at his shattered arm. They’d never really had a chance. It was almost unfair.

It was totally unsatisfying.

“Sorry about the cabinet,” Nesterin added to the Milliner. “I’ll get it, if you have a broom?”

Since she’d just seen the two women beat the tar out of a gang who’d been tormenting her for months, the Milliner was quick to fetch up the dustpan from her back room.

“Pick up those things there, before the blood gets on them,” Nesterin instructed Sera, pointing at the hats that had been knocked off the stand. She herself began picking up the largest pieces of broken glass.

“No. Can’t we just go? We do all the stabbing and the arrows and we fuck shit up and then we get to _leave_. Tidying up isn’t part of it.”

“Sera, this is this lady’s livelihood, I’m not going to smash everything up and just leave it.”

The one with the long yellow hair, whose leg had a nasty gash in it- care of Sera’s dagger, tried to slide himself along the floor towards the door. Nesterin hit him with the broom.

“It’s fine ‘onestly,” said the Milliner nervously.

“I’ve changed my mind. You’re not allowed to be a Red Jenny. Ever. You’re banned,” Sera huffed.

“I told you I was no fun,” said Nesterin, almost smiling.

But then she thought of the claims made by the gang and that ring that their leader had shown her.

She bent down so that she could get a good look at the yellow haired one.

“Now...are you going to tell me who you actually work for?”

He turned his head away and she couldn’t get a good read on his expression. So she reached out and pulled off his mask. Underneath she saw that his eyes were flinty and dark and that his skin bore the raised pink bumps of rosacea across his sharp nose. His teeth were like grey shards of paving stones, but his mouth was surprisingly plump, pink and delicate. His age was impossible to say; the toll of living as an elf in a city that had never treated it’s elves well had clearly aged him.

“Come on,” Nesterin implored. “You’ve had a good thumping and I’d like this to be the end of it. But if I can’t guarantee that you won’t stop hurting people, I’ll have to call in the guards.”

Those flinty dark eyes flickered towards his leader, “Lady Briala…” he began with some uncertainty.

“No,” said Nesterin firmly. “You’re all elves and you’ve been taking from the humans. No one is going to look kindly on you. You’ll probably get hung. So there’s no point in protecting whoever put you up to this.”

“UUUUUHNNNNNH,” Sera huffed furiously. “They just said it was Briala, right? Don’t see why you can’t get that into your head. Don’t see why you don’t see why it could be Briala neither. She’s just like the rest of them, in’t she? Stepping over little people to get her bony bum on a throne. Saw it all at Halamshiral, didn’t we? Even though you went all elfy eyed about her.”

“But she already has- as you put it- her bony bum on a throne. It makes no sense.”

“Fine. But this lot aren’t going to tell us. We should just kill them and get it over with.”

Nesterin’s sharp ears picked up the nervous shuffling of shoulders and the slight intake of breath coming from the floor somewhere. She was sure it was the one with the broken arm and the bludgeon.

“Fine,” Nesterin shrugged. She gave Sera a nod, pointed at the one with the broken arm and turned away.

Sera nocked her bow. She took aim. Nesterin was confident she would shoot as straight and as true as she always did. Her sharp ears heard Sera take aim.

“Wait!” cried the elf with the broken arm, just as Sera let loose her arrow.

It flew through the air and hit Nesterin’s barrier moments before it might have hit skin and skull.

“Piss! Not enough practise,” cursed Sera. “I’m getting slow.”

“It was bloody close, to be fair. I’m getting slow too,” admitted Nesterin, shaking off her barrier like shaking off droplets of rain. 

“You could ‘ave killed me!” panted the elf looking down at the arrow in disbelief.

“Of course not,” said Nesterin shortly. “ _Sera_ could have killed you. I protected you. I’d like to _keep_ protecting you, but it’s a lot easier when someone wants to protect themselves too. So can we go back and have a conversation about who gave you that ring?”

“Shit,” murmured the elf weakly. “Okay. Shit. It was too good to be true. He said we could keep all the money we raised. Said we wouldn’t get sent down for it either. That he had people ‘oo  would make it so the stink never stuck to us. All we had to do was flash that ring and say it was Lady Briala ‘oo sent us.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Bout four months or so. Good business til...this….”

“Describe the man.”

“Oh I can do more than that. It’s my bastard brother-in-law, Louis Pierre. Know his name and his age and his favorite ‘ole to drink in, to boot. Thinks he’s better than me because he works for some ‘oity toity noble,” he finished. Then he spat a huge gobbet of spit onto the floor.

“Mhhmm,” said Nesterin. “Well, these friends in high places of your brother-in-law aren’t going to be around for much longer, so it’s probably in your best interest to call this one quits.”

* * *

“So, that was fun, yeah?” Sera announced on the street outside of the Milliners. “Apart from the tidying. Maybe we could do this stuff in Ferelden too?”

Wiping the blood from between the intricate detailing of the Spirit Blade handle with her shirts, Nesterin looked ahead and said, grimly: “We’re not finished with this one.”

“What? But we already stomped and smashed and stopped the bad guys! Did you see when I got that one in the leg? Blood coming out like a geyser. Amazing.”

“We still have to get to the bottom of this,” Nesterin pointed out.

“Pffft...that was the bottom. And now it’s got an arrow in it.”

“There’s always more bottom.”

Sera frowned. “I thought you were supposed to be leaving?”

“So I’m an hour or two late? It’s not a problem.”

Turning around, Nesterin found herself face to face with Sera. Wearing that _look_. The one all of her friends and her sisters seemed to wear. Pity and suspicion and sadness mingled with a hint of revulsion.

“You don’t look _you_ right now. You used to glow. But now you’re all grey.”

They headed across town, towards the drinking hole that Louis-Pierre frequented, named _Le Fou du Roi_. The building was tall and aspirational looking. The yellowstone had been whitewashed to look fresher, the curtains had been pulled back to make the pub look brighter and the hanging baskets outside of the door were meant to be jolly. It was still an elf-friendly establishment, however, and the cracks in the paintwork had started to show.

“Do you want something to drink?” asked Nesterin when they got inside.

“Right in the middle of the job?” said Sera, behaving uncharacteristically professional.

“So we don’t look suspicious.”

“It’s not even noon. There’s barely anyone in here,” sniffed Sera.

“So we’ll wait.”

Nesterin parked  herself down at a barstool and signalled for a cup of wine.

It was cheap stuff. New and weak and bitter to the taste. Nesterin turned her body slightly, so that she could get a good view of the door. She knew that Sera would hate the waiting, huffing and drumming her fingers on the table, swinging her legs and counting the arrows she had left in her quiver.

When Nesterin ordered another drink, Sera kept the empty glass, she dipped her fingers in the last of the dregs and began to draw swirls in the table.

“Purple. I hate purple,” she said, watching the wine dry. “Just like Lady Emmald’s stupid purple lips. She looked like she’d been punched into her stupid mouth. She _wanted_ punching in her stupid purple mouth. Shite that came out of it sometimes…”

“She’s long dead, you don’t have to pay any of the shite she said any mind.”

“Easy for you to say. Easy for her to say. She always forgot. Morning comes around she’s got a stink in her smile but she’s saying all this sugary sweet stuff. Cooing and saying _Sera, Sera, Sera_ like it’s all been forgotten. But I can’t forget it, can I? Children are all sticky, right? Stuff sticks to them. You shouldn’t throw things at them that you don’t want them stuck with forever.”

“I think you’re right,” Nesterin assented. She was never, never, _never_ going to have children. She took another sip of wine.

“Look, Lady Emmald was sad. And that’s fine. Lots of people are sad. But you’re not supposed to sit on your sad and squeeze it and squeeze it into a stone. And you’re especially not supposed to start running around with that stone, trying bash people’s brains in with it.”

“That’s not what Solas told me,” said Nesterin, thinking of the cutting edge of her hardened heart.

Sera just blew a raspberry.

One drink later, and their man finally appeared.

He was an elf, dressed in livery the colour of mustard. His brass buttons and buckles were shiny and his boots were inky black. Under his arm, he was carrying a powered grey wig, with two perfectly set curls on either side of it. Over his face he was wearing a shining mask. Nesterin narrowed her eyes and tried to place the animal it resembled, A cat, she thought, from the feline slant of the eye holes and the pushed up structure of the nose.

He worked in the household of the Duke d’Haricot, Nesterin deduced, thanking Josephine for being so patient and thorough in teaching her the history of the Orlesian nobility.

The barkeep confirmed her suspicion when he asked, “A brandy, Louis-Pierre?”

“An ‘alf if you, please. I ‘ave several errands to run this morning.”

Slipping her hand into her pocket, Nesterin closed her fingers around the ring. She got up to stand beside Louis-Pierre at the bar, watched as he took a sip from his glass snifter, and placed the ring on the counter top between them.

“Where did you get this, Louis Pierre?” she asked him.

He did not turn around, his eyes flickered towards the ring and he swallowed.

“I ‘ave never seen this ring before in my life.”

“Strange, because your brother-in-law insisted that you gave it to him.”

Louis Pierre turned then, to get a good look at her. Nesterin watched his eyes take in her face, her hair and her arm. He struggled for a moment, she saw, to reconcile her with the bar and the blood on her shirts, then he took a step back.

“My Lady ‘erald!” he exclaimed. He dropped into a bow but Nesterin shook her head.

“None of that. Don’t bow to me.”

“I’m sorry?”

She pointed to the ring again, “You’re hurting people. You’re complicit.”

“Complicit?” Louis Pierre asked, shocked. “I am not hurting anyone, My Lady. I was trying to ‘elp my Emperor. In my own small part.”

“How could  you think that you were helping?”

“Maintaining stability. This is what you do too, _non_? They say Lady Briala made a pact with an ancient demon for power. We had to displace her at all costs or she would have tried to instigate a revolution.”

He spoke quickly, with a desperation to make her see the best of his intentions. For once, Nesterin was grateful for her title. From his silly little snifter to his powdered wig, Nesterin knew that she was dealing with the pretentious, obsequious type of city elf. He wanted her to like him because she was famous.The sight of him would have made most Dalish stomachs turn.

But Nesterin knew the way she had simpered the last few months and could not bring herself to feel too judgemental.

“Look at what happened in the alienage, doesn’t that prove me right?” he went on, confessing as easily as a drain drips water. “I started the rumor months ago, in the hopes that the law would come down upon ‘er. Not that the law needs any help now. She’s ruined after what happened to that alienage.”

“It was more than a rumour. Your brother-in-law was stealing from people.”

“My sister married a fool with no talent for anything but stealing. But her children need to eat and it was all in aid of a greater good.”

Nesterin fought not to laugh bitterly. Louis Pierre’s words were so typical. There was the greater good, but there was also his sister’s children and the human’s with their shops never came into it. Because sacrifice and the greater good was always easier when it was someone else being sacrificed and the greater good meant “whatever’s good for me”.

“The ‘umans ‘ave been good to us, non? I like my job, Lady ‘erald. I like my wig.”

“But you didn’t act alone. You were put up to it by your employer.”

Louis Pierre turned away from her.

“You didn’t get that ring by yourself. It was given to you,” Nesterin insisted.

“I’m sorry my Lady, but you cannot prove that.”

“You promised your brother-in-law protection from the noose Duke d’Harcot is a minor noble. He hardly has that much sway. Either you lied, or he had orders from somewhere too. I’m not interested in the Duke. You won’t be betraying him by telling me.”

“Fine. It was not my employer who promised protection. It was the lady.”

* * *

“One more drink and then we’ll press on,” Nesterin told Sera, coming back to sit beside her.  

“He didn’t tell you what you wanted? Bet I could loosen his tongue,” she said wickedly, patting her dagger.

“No I got it. It’s the Emperor’s fiance. Lady Marie Therese.  She’s given me trouble before,” Nesterin pulled back the collar of her shirt to reveal the small scar left by the Antivan arrow. “Should have guessed. I let that one slide. But this time I’m going to confront her.”

Sera made a face.  “So. But. No, yeah? We just got to the bottom. This is Briala’s problem now, and we should just let her sort it. If she even thinks it’s all that worth sorting…”

“If Briala has any sense she’s keeping her head down. I don’t mind doing this one thing for her.”

She took her drink and downed it.

They were barely out of the door when Sera turned the bow on her again.

“Sera-”

“You’re avoiding something, right?  Come on. Say it. Don’t be a prick.”

“I’m not avoiding anything,” Nesterin put her hands up again.

“This whole thing is you avoiding. I wanted to do one last Fuck ‘Em: pure simple fun. But all this stuff you’ve got going on in your head is staining it. Like- like shit marks on underpants-”

“-Thank you for _that_ imagery, Sera.”

“You’re making it about something else. So you might as well tell me what the something else is.”

“Sera, stop it. Put the bloody bow down.”

“I’m not going until you tell me.”

“I’ll go by myself then!”

“Well I’ll shoot you in the back then!!!”  

“Fine,” Nesterin groaned. “They want me to leave because they think I’m sick. But I’m not sick. And even if I was...Ferelden won’t do anything different than Val Royeaux. I might as well stay here. At least here sometimes someone has a bit of pity and _deigns_ to tell me something.”

“How are you sick? Is it that frigging mark again?” asked Sera sharply. “How much more of that arm are they gonna to have to lop off before it’s _gone_?”

“No, Sera it’s not the mark. I guess. Not pressingly anway. Cullen and Vivienne just reckon I drink too much.”

She expected Sera to laugh. She steeled herself for the laugh.

“I knew it. I knew it back in that bar right away. Fuck I knew it during those last days at Skyhold. Purple lips and sadness like a stone,” sighed Sera, folding away her bow. “Well come on, Shovel Face. Let’s get you back to Cullen.”

“After this.”

“Seriously? Still?” Sera shook her head. “Lady Emmald _died_ . She turned into a skeleton, she went blind, she started chucking up blood. You know what the last thing she ever said to me was? _I think I’ve just pissed myself._ Not ‘I love you’ not ‘I’m proud of you’ not even ‘I’m sorry for being such a shit Mum, Sera’. No. She pissed herself and then she died. How shitty would that be if that’s how you went? After everything!”

Pinching her temple, Nesterin tried to stop the words coming out. But they were already pushing against her lips like bile. _Oh hang it all._

“I _already_ died, Sera,” she snapped impatiently. “Don’t you remember? When we were in the Crossroads? I said goodbye to everyone.”

The mark had howled through every  one of her veins, flaring out from her hand and ripping through her bones and tissue. First the pain came in waves, inching over her incrementally with the ebb and flow of agony. Then it came rolling like a flood.

She’d turned to her friends with the heaviest of certainties. Trembling to contain the energy that wanted to burst through her flesh, she had told them _it had been an honour._

And then, at the end, she couldn’t even stand. She could barely see. Solas was just a swirl of colours standing over her: silver and gold and so much green. The Well of Sorrows had called out to her with whispers. Its endless ocean began to swell around her body. Her nerves began to blacken and die like dowsed embers.

“I made my peace with all of it. I’d done something, I’d served my one great purpose, just like the Hero of Ferelden, just like Hawke...”

Only to be held gently and kissed softly and ripped violently through the veil into cold, cruel reality…

He’d brought her back from the dead with a kiss. Like a fairy story you might tell to a child.

But to what end? For what reason?

To live out what little time remained pretending that she didn’t only taste ashes in her throat?

To save someone who made it so hard to be saved?

To love someone who made love seem like such a cold and lonely thing? Something that could only be suffered and endured?

 _As it was for me,_ Amaril echoed. _My life flowed out of my body, it  sank deep to the bottom of the well and it waited for a millennia down there. And to what end? For what reason?_

“Now you’re just being stupid,” snapped Sera. “Why does everything have to _linger_ with your lot?  Diddling themselves over broken statues in the woods? Following that bald twat just because he says he’s older than balls? Making threats against _my_ world and mooning over something that happened ages ago? Every one of your feelings is like a bad fart. Why don’t they just _go away_?”

“Because they just can’t,” shrugged Nesterin. “I’m going to go do Briala’s thing now.”

“Well I’m definitely dragging your stupid arse to Ferelden now!”

Nesterin asked Amaril for help with the spell. They built the cage together, pulling the lightning from out of the air. It sprang up instantaneously, Sera snarled and tried to step out from it, only to hiss as the static shocked her.

“Sorry, Sera.”

“That’s right.   _Sera, Sera, Sera_ like it’s all been forgotten. But I don't forget, do I? Fuck you,” she spat.

This, Nesterin  had to admit as she ran away from one of her friends _again_ , felt quite a bit like the bottom.

* * *

She was breaking pretty much every unspoken rule of Orlesian etiquette by showing up at the home of Lady Marie Therese unannounced. She didn’t have a mask, she didn’t have a retinue, she didn’t even have a change of clothes from the blood smattered shirt she’d been wearing. The title of Herald was enough to gain entrance though, even if she didn’t have an Inquisition behind her.

She was admitted into the hall of a grand house. From the panicked footsteps on the tiled floor she guessed that her coming was something of an inconvenience, but soon enough the Emperor’s fiance appeared.

The woman she’d been picturing, Nesterin was shocked to see, was actually a girl. A teenager, possibly sixteen or seventeen, Nesterin guessed, though it was hard to tell under her porcelain mask. Her sandy coloured hair was arranged neatly behind her head, tied with a black ribbon,  she wore a turquoise dress with ruffles and large sleeves and was delicately boned, almost like an elf.

“Oh, ‘ello. Come and have some tea,” she said sweetly.

Nesterin didn’t forget that it was because of this teenager she had ended up nearly mad from poison, bleeding out in the woods.

“Don’t mind Alodie, she’s my chaperone in town” Marie Therese said as she led the way through to the parlour, nodding to the Harlequin by a fortepiano. The Harlequin blinked at her, almost mechanically through dark eyes smeared with red paint and Nesterin knew she would find it difficult not to mind the paid assassin watching over the whole proceedings.

Marie Therese flopped onto a chaise longue and patted the space beside her.

“The ‘erald of Andraste in my house,” Marie Therese chuckled as Nesterin sat down. “They tell tales of your beauty and grace from Qunandar to the Kocari Wilds . It’s always so sad watching beauty fade isn’t it?”

An elven servant came in with tea served on a heavy platter. They set the platter down on the table between Nesterin and Marie Therese, who took up the intricately detailed porcelain teapot and began to pour golden liquid into delicate cups painted with golden curlicues.

Nesterin didn’t take it the tea she was offered, instead she put the the ring down on the table and Marie Therese blinked at it. Then she giggled.

“That silly little ring! How funny. I paid one of Marquise Briala’s household a pittance for it. An amusement I had trying to discredit her. Are they still doing that?”

“Yes,” said Nesterin heavily.

She realised she didn’t have a plan or an endgame at all, outside of a pot of tea with a girl who’d tried to murder her.

It was an unsettling feeling, becoming slowly aware of yourself skidding off the rails.

“Oh, little Rabbit,” cooed Marie Therese. “You have a bruise under your eye. Not from trying to untangle my childish little web, I hope?  It really was quite an inconsequential matter. Especially now.”

“I suppose having me assassinated was an inconsequential matter too?”

Marie Therese’s eyes turned steely. “No. The opposite. I overestimated you. Don’t worry I won’t do it again. I got my father’s money back, you weren’t worth the gold it would have taken to kill you.”

Not even worth assassinating anymore...Varric would have to stop calling her Bullseye.

“Gaspard always said you played the game well. My poor dear Chevalier, has no idea. And you have no idea either. The two of you clunking about Val Royeaux in your armour like little tin men. It’s very funny.”

“I suppose, after you’ve fought in a Civil War or an army of Red Templars, the rest seems quite tedious.”

“I suppose,” shrugged Marie Therese. “I defer to your wealth of experience. I’m just growing into my teeth.”

Nesterin hoped not _literally._ She really was quite young.     

“How long did it take you to trace the ring back to me?”

“An hour or so. I stopped for a drink,” Nesterin confessed.

“That’s not so bad, _non_?”

“It’s fine. But the trouble with electing to simply pay people to do your dirty work  is that they always give you up too-” Nesterin shook her head, she wasn’t about to give this girl tips or marks out of ten for her first steps into political intrigue. “It doesn’t matter. You made your biggest misstep going after Briala in the first place.”  

Marie Therese pouted, “But she makes Gaspard so sad. And she’s always acting like she’s Empress of all the elves. I’m supposed to be the Empress next!”

“Ah well,” she added brightly. “I needn’t have bothered will all that nonsense, though. Providence handed me an exploding alienage. I’m going to have her hung for treason when Gaspard finds her, I think. Or made a tranquil and then hung.”

Nesterin felt vindicated for convincing Briala to leave the city and her fist curled up into a ball. She looked down at the tea tray and thought about smashing it into Marie Therese’s face.

The future Empress recognised her look and she giggled, “No, no. I must warn you, I am Alodie’s charge and also her best student. My teeth may just be growing but I guarantee they are sharp.”

Marie Therese reached into her sleeve to pull out a long, silverite dagger. From behind her, Nesterin caught the sliding of steel from a holster as the Harlequin also revealed her weapons.

Nesterin held up her hands and stood up. “I’ll go,” she said. “But I’ll warn you not to try this again. Briala’s under my protection, and I’m protected by the Chantry and that’s all there is to it.  

“Wait! Just like that? Don’t go,” Marie Therese frowned. “You won’t even give me a little fight?”

“I may be rusty at the game, but I think I know better than that.”  

Marie Therese nodded, “Your Chantry protection probably wouldn’t extend to attacking the future Empress yourself in broad daylight.”

“Such things tend to be frowned upon. Even in Orlais.”

“Especially in Orlais. The court would never forgive you for being so brazen. These things are better done indirectly…. Alodie?”

The Harlequin stepped forwards and Nesterin willed her spirit blade into existence. Pure magic erupted from the silver and lauzerite handle with a sound almost like a _sigh._ Something about it seemed, as Sera had put it, grey instead of glowing. Like poor, fat Falon it wanted for exercise and Nesterin hadn’t been able to give it. Wasn’t even about to give it now, in all honesty, for she made her plans to fade step through her would be assailant.

Then, Alodie stepped past her instead.

The painted Harlequin crouched down beside Marie Therese and she patted her leg. Sword unsheathed, held aloft, Nesterin watched, confused, as the Harlequin murmured something softly and Marie Therese smiled.

Then, quite suddenly and quite from nowhere, the Harlequin drove the dagger into Marie Therese’s thigh.

A low scream of agony echoed through the parlour. Nesterin recoiled with a dull horror, as the Harlequin stepped away and blood blossomed in the front of the dress of the enfant terrible.

“She’s killing me!” screamed Marie Therese, looking up at Nesterin with a pale face and frightened eyes.

Then she winked, and the Harlequin launched at her.

The last though Nesterin had, before she rose up to meet the Harlequin’s steel with the Spirit Blade, was:  

“ _I fucking hate Val Royeaux_.”

* * *

 

 


	33. ...rencontre un objet inamovible

She’d been in this Val Royeaux prison once before:

Below the blue minarets and the floating canopies of the Summer Bazar, the air was close and hot and wet. Black mould flared out from the stone like bruises and condensation formed like glass over the prison bars.

Blackwall- _Thom Rainier_ \- sat in the cell, folded up around himself like a crumpled confession letter. He must have been boiling underneath his thick gear, thought Nesterin. Beads of sweat had started to roll down from his forehead, falling like fat teardrops onto the ground.

“Was the bailiff telling the truth? Did you really do those things?” she’d asked him sharply, feeling as if her jawbones were going to explode from clenching them together so tightly.

He sat and he looked at his hands and said:

“Yes, I did. It’s all true. It’s time we all got a good look at who I really am.”

Nesterin had already  _heard_ who he really was. The list of his crimes, announced to the crowd by the bailiff at the scaffold could not be taken back. The words sat heavily in the stagnant air between them and his voice was so low and so broken. If she tried, she could hear him giving out his terrible orders, she could hear the slide of metal as swords were drawn. Elgar’nan help her, she could even hear the cries of Callier’s children.

But when she tried to take a good look?

She only saw Blackwall sitting in a cell. Blackwall who had taught her to trap rabbits, who liked to carve figurines and who cooked stew. Blackwall, her champion. Who, in battle, drove his boots into the dirt and held the line like a great stone fortress. Who raised his shield to halt the arrows spinning towards the bullseye of her head.  Blackwall, the only other member of the party who could rise up to match her own almost suicidal resolve.

It was much easier to look through _his_ eyes than it was through her own. She knew what he wanted. What he was goading her into when he spat:

“ _This_ is what I am. A murderer, a traitor… a monster.”

“I sentenced Gregory Dedrick to die for less,” she trembled, thinking of the Crestwood mayor who had lead his own double life and fashioning her rage into something cold and hard.

Gregory Dedrick had killed people to save others and she’d executed him out of what she thought was compassion. Thom Rainier had killed only for coin. And then he’d effectively murdered that man, leaving justice unserved, leaving a tangle of lies, hurt, kindness, good deeds and bravery.

 _How could she give him the peace of a swift death? How could she call it a good death if she didn’t_ **_understand_ ** _?_

“I know,” he said heavily. “I meant what I wrote you, Inquisitor. You gave me the courage to do what was right.”

The Inquisitor he described in his final letter to her would have left him to Orlais and allowed him the noble suicide he was angling for. But Thom Rainier forgot that Nesterin had been a Keeper-in-training first.

And, like Deshanna might have scooped up a naughty da’len caught stealing pennies in Wycome, Nesterin took him back to Skyhold to judge him herself.

Because he was her kin, her clan, and she was his Keeper.

Cassandra looked ill when she announced her intentions to extradite Blackwall from Val Royeaux. Dorian swore. Varric warned her that even poetic justice could sometimes go too far. At first, Josephine flat out refused to ask for a dispensation from Emperor Gaspard. Nesterin ended up having to pull rank on her ambassador, for the first and only time since knowing her.

She knew why Josephine refused, of course. She’d thought it meant finding a headsman for a dear friend. They all did. And those days after the revelations were among the saddest and quietest she had ever felt in the Inquisition.

Only Cole could sense the spectacular feats of ethical acrobatics she was doing to justify letting him live:

 _“All of those little lives. All those little coins. He’s trying, he’s better, he’s Blackwall. But_ _all they want is not to have died. You want the sun to stretch everywhere, but the sun makes shadows. Someone always gets left in the dark.”_

In the end, she even ignored Cole.

“You told me once that a Warden was a promise. To protect others. I think you meant to keep that promise. So I’ll make sure that you stand true to it,” she told Rainier, conscripting him to the Grey Wardens once the battle was finished.

After her judgement, Solas had been both furious and disappointed in equal measure. The double standard, the hypocrisy of it all, he said, was staggering.

And in return she argued so prettily against him. She plead the practical: Corypheus was coming. Her companions had learned to fight together and to complement each other's strengths and weaknesses. Blackwall was an important cog in a delicate machine and it was too late to find another. She passed the buck: Blackwall- the _real_ Blackwall -she said, had given his life to see Rainier become a better man, and who was she to override a dead man’s judgement?  She argued and she danced and she said a thousand things that were technically true but also glaringly false.

Truthfully, her decision was beyond words.

Blackwall was her clan and she loved him. It was deep at the heart of her like a taint, spreading out with its spidery tentacles of black rot. She would never forgive him and she would never forgive herself, just as _he_ would never forgive her and never forgive himself. But despite it all, she would bend and twist everything to bring him home and keep on loving him regardless.

And in the end no one would be happy.

“My people had a saying long ago,” Solas finally told Blackwall in Emprise Du Lion, thawing out after months of coldness. "The healer has the bloodiest hands. You cannot treat a wound without knowing how deep it goes. You cannot heal pain by hiding it. You must accept. Accept the blood to make things better. You have taken the first step. That is the hardest part”

His grey eyes flickered momentarily to her and Nesterin smiled gently, vowing to accept her part of the blood and make things better, silently mouthing the words, _“_ _Ma serannas._ **”**

She wouldn’t have known it then, of course, but bringing Blackwall back to Skyhold, against precedent, against reason and against every moral fibre screaming in her body was an indicator of just how _deeply_ fucked she was as far as Solas was concerned.

* * *

But now it was Nesterin in the cell and Vivienne on the other side of the door. She was dressed in her Divine habit again and she looked far beyond summoning up the energy to scold.

When she looked at her herald, Nesterin wondered, did Vivienne feel those tainted tendrils fanning out from her heart too? They’d fought side by side once as well- even taking on a Vinsomer in the Hinterlands, she remembered. It was difficult, perhaps even silly, to explain the raw feminine energy of the beast high up over her nest.  But Cassandra had been there and Vivienne had been there and she’d been there and she’d felt something stronger than mana slip into her spirit blade.

“I didn’t stab her, she stabbed herself,” Nesterin told Vivienne as she looked over at her. “I didn’t know her well, but surely Celene wasn’t like this? So much crazy in such a small package.”

Vivienne said sharply, “I told you you were popular. In Val Falaise women are putting curls into their hair and in Jader everyone has started to wear green and brown. If dangerously stupid, suicidal gambits in the name of the Great Game are becoming the vogue, you have only yourself to blame.”

“I used to hope that maybe one day I might inspire heroism, not hairstyles and histrionics.”

“They aren’t always mutually exclusive,” said Vivienne as a small smile crossed her lips, despite herself. “The Inquisition was graced with more than a few mages, afterall.”

Nesterin chuckled, “ _Dorian_.”

“And you.”

“And _you_. All those headdresses...”

Despite their differences, neither of them could help but smile.It spoke of kinship and of recognition. She had loved her mages so much too. They’d shared a common language, after all. One of fade matter, of mana and yes- she had to admit- heroism, hairstyles and histrionics.

But then Nesterin’s smile withered. Because when she thought of her mages, she inevitably thought of Solas. There at the very centre of them.  His eyes, his hands, his mouth and all of the metaphors that fade-stepped softly from between his lips. The most blighted and beloved of all the loves she carried deep within her heart.

Vivienne sighed deeply. “You should have gone with Cullen when I asked you to.”

“I don’t know what happened. I felt as if I physically couldn’t do it, it was like a Grey Warden’s calling and I had to answer,” she confessed.

Vivienne nodded, as if she understood. Nesterin hoped Vivienne would enlighten her because she certainly didn’t.

“You know you're outside of my jurisdiction now, don’t you?” Vivienne began. “The Grand Cathedral is only a carriage ride away but this is an Orlesian cell, and it was the Orlesian Emperor’s fiance you stand accused of attacking.”

Any trace of a smile well and truly left Nesterin’s face as she realised what Vivienne was saying.

“I understand if you don’t want to pull any strings,” she said flatly, so she could keep the hurt out of her voice. “It’s all a silly misunderstanding, it’ll be sorted out in no time.”

“I _do_ want to. I want to help...but...you won’t take it. And I’m afraid _compassion_ was never my strong suit….”she wrinkled her nose as if the very word ‘compassion’ tasted strange on the lips of the Iron Lady. And stranger still, she pulled, from underneath her Divine habit, a stack of books and passed it through the bars.

Nesterin glanced the top title, ‘ _The Templar and the Tub’_ and guessed it was the sort of frothy romance Cassandra might secretly swoon over.

“So you’re putting me in a time out?” she asked, realising what the books meant.

“Essentially. Though I may not have put it in such _childish_ terms. As you said...you didn’t actually do anything wrong. I’m sure we can recover or create a mountain of evidence to prove your innocence. But in the meantime, you could relax?”

“I think I might have preferred it when you took me to the spa,” said Nesterin flatly.

Across town, Nesterin imagined, the elves of Val Royeaux might have started to be sorted and catalogued. Her people in the alienage, divided into mages and non-mages and being controlled by the Templars. 

“It won’t be more than a few days, a week at the most. Take a nap, read a book….”

“And think about what I’ve done?”

* * *

  _So what’s the plan?_ asked Amaril, watching the shape of Vivienne round a corner. _Call a guard in? Fade step through him? Or just blast open the bars?_

Nesterin slid down the sticky wall, shaking her shirt slightly to let some air circulate. It was still as unimaginably humid as it had been when she’d gone to visit Blackwall.  When she was finished, she picked up the stack of books.

_I was thinking ‘The Templar and the Tub’ or ‘The Knight’s Concubine Returns’- though I think that one’s a sequel and I haven’t read the first._

_Are you serious? You’re just going to sit here?_

_I did just get arrested. Laws_ **_do_ ** _actually apply to me._

_Not to me. I’m ancient, I’m elvhen and I’m dead._

_You’re also riding around inside of me, so pipe down and pick one._

_Harrumph. Fine. Go for the second._

_Steamy! I didn’t know that’s what you were into._

_Shut up._

Nesterin just about managed to clamber through several paragraphs of the most lurid prose devoted to the breasts of the knights concubine and her plot for revenge based on a slight that had probably occurred in the first book before she realised that her interests were waning.

 _Keep reading,_ Amaril insisted, apparently much more invested in the story.

But Nesterin, who’d been propping up the book on her knees let it flutter shut.

 _You know, Solas never liked reading textbooks,_ she thought. Not really to Amaril in all honesty.

_He said he had to force himself to read history. What did he say? Something about how he preferred gaining his knowledge by more ‘practical means’. I found out that all he had on his desk were poetry volumes, novels and, for some reason, eight cookery books and he swore me to secrecy._

_Well, he was a soldier. You can’t learn to fight from a book._

_Do you remember anything else about his war?_

_It made the ground tremble. They had to fight in a place there was no sky. That’s all I know. But I don’t think it’s a case of me not remembering, I don’t think we were ever meant to know the truth. I think something terrible was happening below the earth._

_Something that made elvhen rise into gods._

_Not all of us. Some of us just stayed how we always were. And got trampled on._

* * *

It was difficult to sleep in the cell, what with the heat and the hard ground. It was even more difficult when she realised that hours had passed, night was falling and that she was steadily encroaching on a fitful kind of sobriety.

It made the sweating worse and her jaw and her fingers felt strange.

In snatches, she thought she dreamed of Amaril. Of a dead garden and an ashy sky and then of the first tentative, white snowdrops, growing out of the dirt with their heads drooped as if they had forgotten the sun. Far away, someone was whispering in the old, dead language of her people. She thought she could see the shape of them, distantly. Their head was drooped too.

The whispering got louder. It seemed to come from outside of her head. And then she realised she was being told to wake up, in elvish.

She opened her eyes and saw Elandrin, speaking to her perfectly in the language of a long dead people- not just in phrases, but in full sentences. Words that even she had to check with the voices to understand.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him in common.

Elandrin looked over at the guard and put two fingers to his lips. That was enough to fill her with fear. Never mind that his long hair looked limp, his yellow eyes were round and wide and frightened and his whole body, right up to his ears, was twitching and trembling.

“Elandrin, what’s wrong?” she repeated as the voices from the well interpreted her thoughts and turned them to words swiftly. “Is it my sister’s? Where are they? Has something happened to them?”

She didn’t speak slowly, he shouldn’t have been able to understand. But he did, and he looked wretched to hear it.

“Laisa’s gone,” he said miserably.

Nesterin felt the bottom drop out of her stomach.

“What do you mean she’s _gone_? Where’s she gone?”

“I don’t know exactly. I don’t….forgive me. This is all my fault. This is all my fault. Mythal guide me, my failures, all my terrible failures. I never never meant to hurt him or her. Stupid boy. He was told. He knew I would fail her in the end.”

He spoke frantically, clutching at his hair and looking quite deranged. His voice, she dimly noticed, sounded low and unfamiliar.

The details of him almost got lost though, in the swirling mire of worry that curled up in her. Laisa in a ditch, Laisa impaled on a knife. Laisa at the bottom of Val Royeaux harbour, Laisa buried in a shallow grave.

She shut her eyes and put the thought aside separating herself from her panic as best she could.

“Slow down,” she told Elandrin firmly. “Look at me. _Look at me_. I want to help Laisa. Even more than you do. And I will, but you aren't speaking straight and I need all of the information you can give me.”

Elandrin breathed in, his nostrils flaring, his yellow eyes darting and he looked nothing like the egotistical elf who had flashed her a dazzling white smile in the woods.

“I was born into Clan Ishmaroth-”,he began.

“Not that much information,” she snapped. “I meant about my sister.”

“I’ll speed though, I promise,” he said, starting to sound more like himself. He did so love to spin his stories. “I didn’t have a choice when they sent me away. Clan Ishmorath is more than fine with keeping more mages than necessary but my parents bartered me away for a bag of pelts and a Dwarven made dagger. Keeper Glennis never lied, he never told me the curse was anything but a terrible burden, but he told me stories and- after a while- I thought he was talking as much nonsense as you did when I first told you.”

“What does your bloody curse have to do with my sister?”

“Because I’m here  when I should be with her. I should have stopped her, or helped her...I should be ready to die to protect her. That’s what I should have been….”

“Elandrin!” she snapped, trying to shake him out of this fit of self pity.

“I only wanted to be close to the story. I never wanted to be _in_ it.”

She wished he was closer, so that she could slap him.

“You’re like her though, aren’t you?” he went on maniacally. “You must be, or you would never have become Inquisitor. Something in both of you draws you right to the very centre. I saw it so clearly at the Arlathvhen. She’s _so_ brave. The very bravest woman I ever knew.”

“What are you _talking_ about? Where’s my sister?”

Slumping, Elandrin turned his pretty, baleful yellow eyes on her and he said:

“Don’t be angry with me.”

Through the bars, he passed her a paper. On it, she saw a clumsy scrawl, written in a decidedly unpractised hand.

And she realised, reading, with a pang of sadness hidden amongst a steadily rising tide of horror, that she didn’t even know when her sister had learned to read.

_Elandrin,_

_Ouriel and the rest are leaving Val Royo. I proved my loyaltee and they promised they will take us. I know your scared, I know you still arnt sure. But  _ _I am._ _This is the only way for us to be together. This is the only way to bild a better world._

_Meet me at our place. At midnight._

_Dread Wolf’ guide us._

_I love you._


	34. One Big Elfy Adventure!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for addiction and detox and alcoholism and depression and everything ever.  Nesterin. Does. Dumb. Shit. To. Her. Body.

****“I _knew,”_ she said bitterly, as she finished reading the note. “ I _knew_ you were one of his fucking agents”

In the current circumstances, it did not feel particularly vindicating to be proven right.

But Elandrin only scoffed and snarled and sighed, one after the other, in quick succession. “This dance again?” he muttered bitterly. Then he slapped his hands on the bar, leaning into her and adding furiously, “I can promise you, I'm a lot of things, and you’re right- none of them are any good. But I am _not_ one of Fen'Harel’s. Why would I give you that letter if I was a spy? Why wouldn’t I have just _gone_ with her.”

“Because it’s a trap.”

“It’s a trap, she says!” said Elandrin throwing up his hands. “A trap! I willingly put the woman I love in a trap! What kind of _monster_ -” his yellow eyes caught hers and he drew in a breath stopping himself.

Nesterin gritted her teeth.

“Look, believe me or don’t, Nesterin. Because she’s gone either way. And the longer you spend not trusting me, the further away she gets from both of us.”

Whatever the truth was, Nesterin was in a bind and she knew it. Trap or no trap, there was no way she wouldn’t try to find her sister if there was even the smallest possibility that Laisa might get hurt. And anyone who knew her well would have been able to predict it as easily as they could have predicted the rising of the sun...

And either way, Laisa would be heartbroken. One way or another, either to Nesterin or to the Dread Wolf, her lover had betrayed her. However stupid and misguided she might have been in her actions, Nesterin felt a stab of sympathy for her sister.

And an intense stab of hatred towards Elandrin.  

“She wants to meet you at midnight. How long do we have?”

“By the time we get you out of here, it will already be too late.”

The stabbing intensified.

“If she loves you, she will wait for you...for as long as she can,” Nesterin shot back. Elandrin at least had the decency to look ashamed.

“We don’t know where they are going. We don’t know what they are planning…”

“Bullshit,” Nesterin muttered.

“I don’t know _BECAUSE I’M NOT A SPY!_ ” Elandrin finally roared. And then he slumped, placing his hands over his eyes to hide the fact that tears had started to form.

Turning around, Nesterin  left him to it, her mind racing as she tried to come up with a plan. There was a pressure in the back of her skull that made it difficult. There was the heat from the close air that made her brain feel like it was boiling. There were the whispers from the well, getting louder and louder with each passing moment.

 _We are trapped_ …

_Thunderous voice shatter the stillness…_

_I think I  miss the birds most of all..._

If she broke out of the prison and didn’t get to Laisa in time, she was fucked. Stranded in the city, the Empire bearing down on her and no way to get to her runaway sister. If Elandrin was a spy, she could have gotten a sense of the movements of Solas’ agents, where Laisa was likely to go, where she was likely to be sent to. But of course that would make Elandrin actually _useful_ and that was never going to happen….

_She took the gathering storm, trapped its fury in golden limbs, and strung it with the screams of the south wind…._

_That’s a lie. She might as well have taken  the gathering storm and farted down the hallway._

_Amaril, please get them to shut up!_

If only there was something else she could do, she thought. Or _someone_ else. Another agent who could lead her to wherever Laisa might be headed. And who she could barter her sister for...

 _Ma banal las halamshir var vhen,_ said Amaril. _This is a dangerously stupid, suicidal idea._

_My speciality. But I won’t be able to do it alone..._

Cassandra was her first choice. Cassandra would always be her first choice. Under a sickly green sky Cassandra had tossed over her staff so that they could fight off a parcel of rift addled shades together. The years since had all fanned out from that moment. But Cassandra was far away in her mountains with her seekers. And even if she were close at hand, Nesterin couldn’t bring herself to put Cassandra in that kind of position with the chantry.

Maybe she should just trust Vivienne and _ask_ for help….

But Vivienne would never follow her into anything ever again. She had her own organisation to run and Nesterin had blasted what remained of her authority to smithereens, brick by bitter brick, one drink at a time.

The Iron Bull had promised her he would come running…

But stealth had never exactly been his strong suit and she needed to slip silently between the laws of Orlais, not run at them in a blood frenzy, screaming ‘mayhem’ at the top of her lungs.

Better, she thought, to have someone who was already on the wrong side of the law as far as the Emperor was concerned. And someone who had no regard for it. Better to have _elves_ , who could hide and be swift and maybe even slide amongst Solas’ agents if it ever came to it...

“Do you have something to write with?” she asked Elandrin.

Her hand was shaking.  Badly. She shook it out and, using her amputated arm as a sort of linchpin against the wall, forced herself to write on the back of Laisa’s note.

The words came out like the spider-scratches of a lunatic. Like poor mad Gaelbana’s self inflicted vallaslin.

“Now, Elandrin, I need you to pull your _head_ out of your _arse_ for _once_ and do a couple of things for me,” she snarled savagely at the paper.

“Girls first. Mirwen and Bel need to get out of the city. No one else is holding them accountable for my mistakes ever again. Ask the Iron Bull to help them get to Kirkwall, Olympe will pay him. They can have Falon too.”

“Then you need to find _Briala_ and _Sera_ ,” she added, straining slightly. “By Mythal’s mercy they might still be in the city...and not too totally completely pissed off at me. _I hope_. Go to the harbor, leave something red for Sera. We’ll have to go through Red Jenny. As for Briala…”

“I can get a message to the Marquise. She’s had someone watching over the house since the eluvian was delivered,” said Elandrin.

“Wanted me to have it, but didn’t want it out of her sight I suppose,” said Nesterin grimly. “If it doesn’t look like you’ll be able to get to them within the hour, come back and….we'll cross that bridge when we come to it…”

Elandrin nodded and she passed him the paper. As he folded it she added, frantically:

“And supplies! We’ll need supplies.”

Elandrin took his instructions and Nesterin watched him slip out of sight. When she was sure he was gone, she slumped against the bars of her cell, gasping and trembling.

“ _Fuck! Fuck, fenedhis_ , _fuck,_ ” she whispered weakly.

 _You need something to drink,_ said Amaril.

It really didn’t need pointing out. Nesterin remembered when the mark had flared out from the epicentre of her hand, spreading through her shoulder, ripping out through her skin and almost felt the same magic, angry and erratic and poisonous, singing out from her chest and head and guts.  

It was like the first stages of the red lyrium madness. Shutting her eyes and pressing her face against the damp brick walls of the cell, Nesterin thought of bloody coloured crystals lurking underneath her skull. She thought of  the red haze around Cassandra and Varric in the nightmarish future of Redcliffe. And how Solas had said, so simply, _I am dying. But no matter._

Which was strange because, in her experience, dying had everything to do with _matter_.

 _You’re not dying,_ said Amaril. _You_ **_were_ ** _dying. So slowly. Over months and months. And you kept on going._

“Because I was _drinking_ ,” Nesterin snapped out loud.

How long had it been since Elandrin left? Two minutes? Twenty minutes? Two _seconds_? It seemed to crawl by. _Fenehdis_. She shouldn’t have left him to it. There was no way he’d be able to find Sera and Briala. And they might not even...they probably wouldn’t…

She heard the sound of several footsteps coming down the hall. It was surely too early for Elandrin to have come back, and the metallic clatter of armour indicated that it was one of the guards. Already she began to formulate ways and means to find her escape.

It would probably be easier if she just did it herself.

_Is this a break out for Laisa or for liquor?_

_Shut up!_

One guard accompanied a man in mage’s robes. The guard wore a gilded mask, to match his opulent Orlesian uniform whilst the mage’s face was bare. She recognised him, by his purple eyeglasses, as the lead healer of the White Spire’s Circle but his name escaped her.

“Lady Herald,” said the man, stopping in front of the cell.“I’m afraid you won’t be able to bribe me out of taking proper care of you this time.”

What was his name? She thought, frustrated. It began with an L. Possibly.

 _Lewes,_ said Amaril.

“I don’t feel well,” she told Lewes. If she needed to vomit to sell the story, she felt sure she could do it. If anything, it was proving harder to swallow the bile down.

“No, I don’t suppose you do,” he said simply, standing outside the doors of the cell. “Given that you’ve been poisoning yourself and forcing your body to work harder than it should- probably for years. Without a drink in you, it’s going to just keep on working harder. Which means you’re in for a whole world of misery.”

It sounded like losing the mark, she thought. And genuinely fought not to laugh. 

That poison in her system that prickled sharp and green with an ancient, intoxicating magic. She had lost the battle against it, there in the crossroads. She had surrendered herself over to darkness and the swirling depths of the Well of Sorrows. And then, after her dead arm was shucked away from living flesh, the rest of her mana began to sing out for it plaintively. It had not felt liberating. It had only been cold and aching and desperately lonely.

It sounded like giving up the Inquisition. She’d tried to run away. More than once in the very early days. Back to Deshanna and her sisters and her people. Had contemplated severing her arm and escaping the strange shemlen who held her captive. That old elven hedge mage had stopped her. Pointing out that _he’d_ volunteered, despite the danger. Pointing out that even if she ran, the chaos would surely follow.  So she stayed and faced it, like an idiot. She fell under a mountain. She got flung into the future and tossed into the fade. She let an empress die, she battled endless demons, she sold her _fucking soul_ to an old well.

She should never have ended it. She shouldn’t have sent her people away. She shouldn’t have abandoned her castle and her herb garden and her stables and her kitchen cats and her soldiers.

It sounded like the life of a thing that people called a hero, a champion, a herald. She remembered Hawke on the battlements of Skyhold, burly and bearded and- Cassandra had been right, naturally- a better person to take on Corypheus than a skinny little lost Dalish mage. He cracked jokes with Varric and his smile still came easy. But he’d been the first person to throw himself at the nightmare.

It wasn’t until after the Inquisition was over that Nesterin really understood why.  

“Give me something to drink then,” she demanded the healer.

 _Elandrin must have gotten to Olympe’s by now,_ she thought. And she could only imagine the terrible possibilities of where Laisa was. She didn't know how much time she had, but it truly felt as if it was running out. 

“Your wish is my command, my lady,” said Lewes.

He proffered her up a potion in a bell shaped glass, It sloshed with the same consistency as thin shit and was coloured almost identically.  

Nesterin sniffed it sharply. “More magebane?”

“Bitter elfroot and milk thistle. It’ll help.”

Not as much as a bottle, she thought errantly, resisting the urge to smash it. A cold snap surged inside of her, making her shiver, and she all but raised her arm to send the potion hurtling to the ground.

 _Shh,_ said Amaril, softly. _Shhh just take_ … _.it’ll be alright_ . _Take it._

A weak wave of strange magic drifted out from the place where Amaril occupied her head. She pictured a droplet of blood in a bucket, fanning out into the water, expanding and twisting. Whatever magic Amaril had collected and hoarded from somewhere or possibly siphoned from her host, she used it to flare out into something that tried to be a comfort.

Or a _compulsion._

Nesterin took the tonic.

It went down worse than vomit. She could feel cold chunks sliding down her throat, and the taste was bitter and putrid.

“I’m hot,” she gasped when she was more than halfway through. It was a lie. Her teeth had started to chatter. “I need you to help me.”

Lewes narrowed his eyes.

“With the buttons,” she snapped, pointing to her shirt. “Please? It’s not easy with one hand.”

Lewes nodded at the guard, who fumbled with the chain. The guard went first, followed by Lewes, and watched them carefully.

At the moment she most liked the position they arranged themselves into, she said,

“I’m sorry. This might sting a bit.”

Then she fade stepped through both of them, grabbing the key from the guard, the cold bite of her motion sending them both onto their knees in agony.

Pulling the door shut before the guard could recover, she fumbled to fit the key into the lock. Moving swiftly had left her head woozy and the lock was stiff. So she hit it with a blast of fire and melted the iron shut instead.

The guard rattled on the bars and Nesterin fell against the wall, resting on her arm, panting and heaving.

“That was a good tonic!” muttered Lewes angrily from the cell. “You’re going to throw most of it up if you keep sloshing it about so. Open the door at once.”

The guard ran at the door with his elbow to bash it open, but Lewes waved his arm at him,

“ It’s alright. I’ve ripped lyrium out of the hands of a six foot seven Templar. I can deal with a silly little drunken elf.”

“Sorry, but I have to go,” Nesterin said sharply.

“If you drink, you’re going to die,” said Lewes. “And if you don’t drink you’re _definitely_ going to die.”

“Well then it sounds like I’ve got nothing left to lose,” she snapped back at him.

Lots of people told her she was going to die as she was running away from them, Nesterin thought. For her sister, she was more than ready to throw herself at the nightmare.

She locked a guard in the front office into a stasis field and bought herself a few moments to go rifling about for her Spirit Blade. When she found that amongst the small collection of her effects, she went rifling about for alcohol, shaking out her own hip flask for maybe two drops of liquor at best before tipping over stacks of paper and pulling open drawers, even smashing one into the ground in frustration.

And the voices from the well….

 _Oh,_ she’d been ignoring them and suppressing them and fighting them and now they came back _singing_.

The high tremulous note of a woman’s voice. The low rumble of baritones. Strange melodies and strange words that she couldn’t make out. The strain of a scream, the whisper of a sigh, melding together into something insistent and persistent.

 _Now you know how I feel. I have to listen to this **all** the time _ , sighed Amaril. _Now you know_   _how hard it is to claw a personality and memories out of this **literally** infernal and endless racket. _

There were bottles scattered all around Thedas. Surely she could find one now? Easily available and practically ever-present, she'd found drink in abandoned homes and old ruins, at the very top of wasting towers and even lurking at the bottom of mines. Over time she’d amassed quite a collection, from Abyssal Peach- which had the exact tang of ancient rotted fruit, to West Hill Brandy which made her think of picking blackberries with her sisters from the hedgerows by the shemlen roads.

The stasis field around the guard broke just as Nesterin found, too predictably, what she was looking for. A viol of something clear that smelled of pure ethanol and a bottle of Lady Flame, a wine coloured like a fire, stashed away by one of the guards or most likely confiscated from a couple of incarcerated drunkards.

When the guard staggered back into motion, she fade stepped through him, hurting him badly and, since she could store the little one away, drank deeply from the bottle of Lady Flame.

 _Weak, stupid, disgusting, broken_....

An errant tear slipped out of her eye and she drank and she drank and she drank and she drank until her throat felt so full of it that she was drowning.

It didn’t taste good. It didn’t taste like _anything_ . It was like one gulp of air just to get the aching to _stop_ and then she’d go back to suffocating over and over again in an endless cycle.

 _Why don’t you stop, then?_ Amaril asked her.

_Why don't you remember your memories and your personality quicker? Same bloody infernal immortal racket._

“ _Quick_. She’s in the farthest cell,” she heard from behind a door. She threw the bottle at the guard and drew her spirit blade just as Elandrin’s voice rang in clearly,“I’ll take the guards, if you can pick the-”

And that was how they found her. Elandrin in front, leading the masked Briala with a dagger in her hand and Sera with her bow raised and ready. An archer, a spymaster and a Keeper without a clan. 

They had come after all. And looked incredibly surprised to see half of their job already done for them. Sera loosed an arrow at the guard and Nesterin just barely dodged it.

“We need to go,”she said as he hit the floor.

* * *

“We can get out of the city through my tunnels,” said Briala as she hurried them through a back alley. “Quickly. If the guards follow us down, they won’t know the labyrinth like I do, but they may still catch up to us.”

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, wine that strong was not made to be chugged back in a matter of minutes and Nesterin had gone from achingly sober to well past the point of the pleasant hum she needed to get by.

Running along the cobbled street, she tried her hardest not to stagger as Briala led them to a cast iron sewage grate. The Orlesian elf slid it open, and signalled them to follow her down it.

“Unfortunate stereotype, this,” Elandrin pointed out. “Rats and rabbits and gutters and such.”

 _I’m going to smash him to pieces,_ Nesterin thought to Amaril _. I’m going to string him up and smash him down and break every bone in his body._

The swirling of her own brain and a slight, spinning sensation was her only response.

“Rabbits don’t live in sewers,” Briala returned coolly.

“Yes, but they do scurry into the shadows away from their predators.”

“Oh fuck off with your elfy noise,” Sera added impatiently. “I’m not an animal and I’m definitely not prey.”

When she stumbled, Nesterin felt Sera slide her bony arm around waist, adding sharply in her ear, “ _Down we go, Lady Stupid Shovelling herself into a grave stupid- face,”_ as she helped her scramble into the sewer.

“ _I’m so sorry Sera,_ ” Nesterin tried. And she slurred, “I’m so, so so sorry.”

“Yeah well,” Sera said, not looking at her, her face a mask of rage, adding ominously. “I’m gonna get you back.”

Her tone of voice promised more than simply lizards in her bedroll.

Under the sewage grate they found themselves in what seemed to be an endless tunnel. The ceiling was low and only the far off moonlight cast a pallid glow, until Elandrin cast a little yellow light in the palm of his hands. Disturbed, a group of wet and malnourished rats went skittering along the walls. On the floor, an inch of stagnant fluids and excrement had settled. The hot stench rising from them was unbearable.

Head spinning, seeing stars, Nesterin pushed her hand against the sewer wall, bent forwards and vomited thickly into the shit-water.

There went the wine and the bitter elfroot too.  

“Lady Herald?” she heard Briala ask over the sound of her own coughing and retching. “That can’t be the effect of magebane. What could those guards have done to her?”

Nesterin was about to blame it on the stench when, out of the corner of her eye, she caught Sera miming the universal symbol for drinking from a bottle.

Something cracked inside of her.

Like a shard of thin and fragile ice.

Flemeth….Flemeth and Mythal, her mistress, the all mother together intertwined had said, once, _one day someone will summarize the terrible events of your life so quickly…_

But she’d never expected anyone to be able to do it with a _gesture._

Hunched over, hand in front of her face, she felt herself shattering into a series of sobs. And then the sobs became dry heaving and retching.

The mismatched company she had assembled out of pure desperation to save her sister stood in the sewer and stared at her. Their eyes had that look of horror that crossed over the face of someone facing down an abomination.

Which, in a sense, she was. A creature possessed, trapped inside of her own body, utterly powerless to resist or stop. Until she looked down and saw the blood on her hands….

“We have to go,” Elandrin urged sharply in her ear. “Laisa needs you.”

He pressed his hand into the small of her back, a flare of healing magic leaving an imprint like the whorl of a fingertip on the base of her spine. It flared out from her bones, somewhere into her abdomen, just under her ribs and Nesterin could have sworn she knew the manner of the mana.

Could have sworn it down to the very heart of her.

A light, restorative, healing spell, finely tuned for the heat of a battle, that might press against her wrist bone when she finally, finally, pulled back, bones aching, mana low, a demon horde encircling.

 _Stay safe, Vehnan,_ it might have said.

Though actually, probably, it said, _don’t die wearing my anchor, you stupid suicidal moron._

The fingers that pressed were different, smaller and broader and came without the same prickle of _wanting_ , the body they belonged to was browner and slighter and showier but by Elgarn’nan, by Mythal, by all the pantheon and especially Fen’Harel, something in it was the _same_.

 _I can promise you,_ Elandrin had said. _I'm a lot of things, and you’re right- none of them are any good…_

“What are you?” she asked him weakly.

Elandrin wasn’t looking at her, but he was confident enough in the spell’s efficacy to begin the business of hauling her onward, through the sewer.

 _Lasia needs you_ . Her sister. Who he loved. And had made love to. And he wasn’t a spy. And. What. the. Fuck. was. _happening_...

“She was _meant_ to go get better. But she decided to go save your bony arse from the empress instead. Because she’s a frigging idiot,” Sera went on saying to Briala as they walked.

“Is that true?”

"Sure. I guess? It's not important.  _We need to go,”_ Nesterin insisted, gritting her teeth. She tried to bury the uneasiness about Elandrin and the fact that her head was spinning.

The spell might have been able ameliorate the worst of the effects of that much alcohol in such a short amount of time, but she was still definitely drunk. Drunk and covered in dry sweat and feeling dry-mouthed and as empty as a wrung out sponge.

Which was good. And bad. And everything was really and truly _so_ terrible.

 _Focus_. She told herself. Focus on the task at hand. On Laisa.

“Thank you,” said Briala. “It seems I owe you yet another favour.”

“Don’t worry about adding interest to this one, I’m going to cash it in immediately.  How close can your tunnels lead us to the Grand Cathedral?

“We can get close. Practically underneath the cloisters. So long as you want to travel in the _complete opposite_ direction from safety.”

“ I need to break into their prison,” said Nesterin grimly, already fairly certain her idea was going to sink like a stone.

“We just broke you out of a prison!” Sera pointed out.

“I need help. Please. Please Sera,” she said, she’d swallow her pride and get down on her knees and beg if she had to, just this once, just for Laisa.

“I hate you,” said Sera. But not- _not_ affectionately.  “If it’s to give a wedgie to our dear divine Vivi, definitely. Anything else and….I’ll think about it.”

“There’s someone in there I want. An agent of Fen’Harel. She’s a right _bitch_ , but I need her too.”

* * *

In the dark of the cells below the Grand Cathedral, Revekah was painting the walls. Specifically, she was painting patterns into the brickwork with thin gruel, gravy, mashed potatoes, smashed peas and whatever other food stuff could be crushed or chewed and turned into something that could be smeared. She had not yet resorted to painting with shit but the smell of rotting food was thick and sour.

Chain dragging along the cold floor, she dipped her fingers into a bowl of gravy and traced a few geometric shapes. When she heard the footsteps and the sound of someone working her lock, she sank to the floor and shrank back into a corner.

The light hurt her eyes, she pushed her hand up to protect them, but saw, through the cracks in her fingers, four of her people- or at least a diminished version of _a_ people- standing in front of her.

“Get up,” Nesterin snapped, panting. She had blood on her shirt- necessary to gain access to the cells, especially since she was still a stumbling mess. There was no going back now. She was done in Val Royeaux.

Revekah narrowed her eyes. Nesterin could see them flicker across the faces present as she quickly decided that this was not a rescue party that she wanted anything to do with. She went back to dipping her finger in her dinner and tracing the shape of leaves.

Another stab of anger hit the front of Nesterin’s temple. Her blood practically _howled_ in her veins. 

“Come on, get up, we’re going,” she insisted.

Revekah sniffed and let out a sharp laugh.

“You smell terrible, like a boozy shitpipe!”

Nesterin leapt at her, snarling like a rabid dog.

“I’m going to pull out your throat, Revekah. I’m going to fade step into your _fucking face_ and pull it out from inside of you,” she hissed.

It must have genuinely appeared like she was going to do it (and in all honesty most of her _really_ wanted to) because both Briala and Sera fell on her to hold her back from making good on her gory threat.

“The catching flies with _acid_ method, I see,” said Briala drily on one side.

“I tried to mix bees with acid once,” said Sera on the other. “Found out that acid is stronger than bees.”

“You don’t say?”

“My sister’s gone wherever you people vanish off to,” spat Nesterin, struggling against the two women holding her back. “You’re going take me where they’ve gone and then you’re going to be my bargaining chip.”

Revekah laughed again, and it was only the combined strength of Briala and Sera put together that kept Nesterin from getting at her.

“You are relying too much on an importance of me,” said Revekah in her broken elvish. “You think Fen’Harel can be made to make a bargain with over something of so little matter as life of a quick child?”

Now it was Nesterin’s turn to laugh.

“Fen’Harel can Fen-fuck-off as far as I’m concerned. _He_ doesn't need to know,” she snarled in common.

Even if he’d lied and every word and every touch had been a false one, there were still certain things about Solas that she knew. Things that he couldn't keep secret, even if he'd tried. 

Solas had kissed her and slept with her and called her his heart and told her that he couldn't bear the thought of losing her, but sometimes Solas, _her_ Solas- who she had only ever loved with every single aching iota of her being- kept himself so maddeningly, so coldly and so cruelly distant from her. He scolded her for being stupid, he insulted her people and he didn’t even bother to lie to her about his past. He simply changed the subject, he shut down the conversation, he took himself away to paint silently in the dark. He claimed her virginity and then went off and had a _sulk_ about it. When he played chess, he sacrificed his knights and his pawns and his castle and his queen. When _she_ got too close for comfort, he decided to humiliate her by taking her face and breaking her heart. He left her and he left her and he kept on leaving and he always, always turned away.

She would have been seriously fucking surprised if he wasn’t leading these people- who he was probably still trying his hardest not to even _see_ as people -in exactly the same way that he loved them.

And, fortunately, Nesterin was the completely-the-opposite-kind-of-maddeningly-exhausting leader with her Druffalo herding and her returning lockets and her finding letters from dead soldiers and her going back for Blackwall and her saving every prisoner, who could spot a flaw in a system like that and work with it.

Sometimes it was actually a benefit to take a good look at the trees in the wood.

“I’ll deal directly with the _people_ who went chasing after some misguided notion of a cause with my sister. So long as they see just how important you are to Fen’Harel, that’s all either of us need. And then you can be free to go and be a bitch wherever you want.”

“I’m _not_ important,” Revekah said in common, still not moving. “ _You’re_ not important. Not when it comes to the bigger picture.”  

Objectively, it was a heartbreaking thing to hear somebody say. But it more than proved Nesterin’s hypothesis correct. It was a good, and terrible and horrible, and useful sign.

“Did she stutter?” asked Elandrin stepping in smoothly, raising his dagger to Revekah’s neck. “You can move or I can _make_ you move.”

Looking up, Revekah turned her eyes up towards Elandrin and she smirked, running her fingertips along the blade of his dagger, almost sensually.

But then she pushed it down and she stood up.

Sera picked the lock on the chain fastening Revekah to the wall and Elandrin picked it up, saying coldly,

“Walk.”

* * *

 “We should head north, the sewers flow out of the city near a small tributary. Do you think Fen'Harel’s agent has access to the eluvians?” asked Briala quietly to Nesterin, when they had slipped back into the sewer.

Nesterin couldn’t remember the last time she’d put her body through so much in one day. True she hadn’t exactly been on the best terms with it; broken, bare faced, missing in parts, completely dependent on alcohol and host to an army of ancient voices. But today she had all but declared war on it. One of those wars with a scorched earth policy.

“Possibly. I don’t know,” said Nesterin.

“I’d like to talk to her when we get to safety. I have so many questions. I’m sure some of them are the same as yours.”

 _Still searching for her lost Felassan,_ Nesterin thought. She could understand the dedication, but she wanted to warn that it would probably lead to nothing but terrible revelations and a world of misery.

“If she’ll even talk. The last time I spoke to her she was...what’s another word for reticent that also means crazy and vulgar?”

She didn’t mean to look back at Sera. Truly.

As the tunnel got thinner, they fell into formation. Briala at the front, followed by Nesterin, then Sera and then Elandrin with his hand on Revekah’s chain dragging her along too. Nesterin wasn’t sure how well she liked that; perhaps she had her own prejudices for preferring the idea of Sera or Briala doing it.

She looked back at the two of them nervously, bringing up the rear. She caught Elandrin’s eyes and he gave her a sad look that was awash with worry and only seemed to scream out:

_Laisa, Laisa, Laisa, Laisa._

Just like her own head.

“I tend to not to threaten to put my hand _inside_ of someone’s face but all the same... it was something I was very good at when I was Celene’s spymaster.”

“When we get to safety,” Nesterin agreed.

As the tunnel got smaller, they had to hunch, almost onto their hands and knees, sloshing through water that was now over their ankles. As if her body wasn’t already chained up, angry and ready at any moment to rise up against her in a terrible vengeance, Nesterin thought it would be just her luck to get a terrible, shit born disease.  

“I miss my eluvians,” Briala sighed. “Everything was so much easier when I didn’t have to inch my way through crap.”

“I can’t imagine the Empress ever doing this,” Nesterin admitted.

Though she’d known so little about Celene before a moment of inaction had changed the course of history forever....

 _Story of your life_ , Amaril chimed in smugly.

 _I hope I find out those marbles you stole from Solas are what made him bring down the evanuris, and put up the veil,_ Nesterin shot back.

_I didn’t steal anything. He said I could have them._

“What? Grand high Empress of Knick-knocks and Allsorts slumming in shit? Not hardly. That was the best, heh, when you just let Florianne stick a dagger in her.  Wish you’d have let me do it. Talk about the ultimate fuck you to the big people.”

“Sera,” said Nesterin sharply, watching the way Briala’s shoulders stiffened in front of her.

“What? She punched down. Of course she did. Bloody great bum on a bloody great throne always means stepping on people to get there.”

“She did punch down,” Briala agreed quietly, after a few minutes, turning back to them. Her expression was impossible to discern under the mask, but her voice sounded heavy and full of sadness. “Often with a dagger in her hand and more than once against our people.”

Nesterin shook her head at Briala and mouthed the word _no_ but it was too late-

“Oh fuck!” Sera squawked angrily looking down the line from Briala, to Nesterin to Elandrin to Revekah. “ I just realised. _Our People!_ Trust you, Shovel Face and your frigging pigging Dalishy elf always takes the elf stuff. You did this on purpose!”

She was rumbled.

“What did she do on purpose?” Elandrin asked from behind.

“This...all of us. _On a big elfy adventure_. I think I’m going to throw up!”

“Please don’t anyone talk about throwing up any more. Not until we’re out of this sewer,” Nesterin begged.

After a few moments, they began to see the pale fingers of moonlight reaching through the bars of a grate. River water lapped listlessy past, picking up the sewage and scum grew on the top of the water. They pushed through it, sludge sloshing around them. Briala bashed on the grate to open it and they all got a first, wonderful, breath of fresh air.

Sera looked over the assembled at the mouth of the sewer as bedraggled and begrimed, they all hauled their way up from the dirt like five monsters made of mud and shit.

“Right, first one to say elven glory gets a punch on the nose.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, thinking about the concept of the bottles of Thedas collection becomes pretty fucked up when you have an alcoholic Inquisitor….


	35. Finding A Way Forward

“Alright, Bullseye, enlighten me. You’ve just faced down one of the ancient magisters who started the Blights... and then a mountain falls on you. You’re alive, barely. All alone. With no light to follow and nothing in front except snow and then ice and then more snow. How does a person move forward through that?”

An dalish elf and a dwarf walk into a bar. Or at least, what _will_ be a bar. Everywhere, there are people in motion. People bringing in crates and tables, people clearing away the cobwebs and the twisting ivy and people shaking up the dust. The elf pinches her nose slightly and the dwarf selects a corner, helping her roll a barrel, upend a bucket and overturn a crate, until they have a serviceable set of a table and chairs.

Once seated, the elf thinks for a moment.

“Sort of like this,” and she slices her hand through the air in a forward motion. “No. Actually, more,” she tilts her hand slightly

“Evocative,” says the dwarf. “But not easy to put on paper. I mean your motivations. Your needs. That fundamental force that keeps pushing your story.”

“I don’t know, Varric, you’re the writer.”

“You have to give me more than that. I mean... _what a moment_ ,” he chuckles. “The lost elf plunging forward when she can’t go back. Where’s she going? If she sees a light in the distance, what does it mean?”

“A lot of people singing at me, I seem to recall.”

“Aha, so it’s the glory?”

She laughs at this, like a little bird, and fights the urge to show him the bloody great bruise that stretches from underneath her buttocks to the top of her ankle. After that, she may as well explain the agonising and more-than-grim reality of being in possession of two cracked ribs as well as the need to sneeze or breathe or take a shit the woods.

Then, she’d wave her hands around the room and around of the rest of the castle. A ruin- a little like her battered, frost-bit body at this point. Which would need to be rebuilt. Which would need lumber and masonry and glass work and hours and days and hands on knees, scrubbing up dirt with wet bristles and soap. And she’d point out that she has such little use for _glory_ in her day -to -day, that it might as well be a word in another language.

“Fine. No glory. Duty then? To the people who were doing the singing.”

“I didn’t know they were there when I was walking. I didn’t know where anyone was,” she points out.

These are the end of the frightening, maddening, unimaginable early days and the beginning of the very best of her days- but the elf is not to know that now. All she knows is that the people she found at the end of that swirling snow storm aren’t really _her's_.

A mountain isn’t enough to make her forget Clan Lavellan and Deshanna. Some part in her still persists in thinking that today, finally today, will be the day she drops them all like a stone and goes home to her people.

Because she can’t feel it yet.

But the love-like-blight _is_ lurking in her heart, already beginning to grow tentacles outwards into her veins. She’s mentally assigned rooms for those of her friends who don’t simply sniff out their territory and mark it like dogs. She’s taken their requests for effects and is worrying over a dresser for Sera, books and bath salts for Cassandra and paintbrushes for Solas. She wants to put an infirmary next to the quartermaster’s office, she wants the kitchen cleaned and for the cook to love his work. She wants it to seep into the food and spread out from the heart of _her_ Inquisition. She wants to take care of them.

Soon that feeling will blight her entirely, soon she’ll be rooted to the spot.

“So then comfort? Safety? _Love_?”

“Of course. Doesn’t everybody wants those things?”

“But not everybody throws themselves under an avalanche and then walks through a blizzard to get it,” he points out.

She just sighs and smiles.

“Honestly, Varric. The truth of it is probably really disappointing. I put one foot in front of the other and I walked. I kept walking.  I just,” she made the same forward motion with her hand. “Because I had to.”

“You know, now I come to think about it, that’s definitely how Hawke always tells his side of things too. Which is why people like you and him _live_ the story and someone like _me_ tells it. ...Eventually. More slowly than my publisher would like.”

“Does that mean you’ll make up some more narratively pleasing motivations for me, Varric?”

“Oh, I never make things up. Just gotta do my best to translate that deep down--” he made the forward motion with his hands now,“feeling in your bones.”

* * *

 The moment they were out of the sewer, Sera’s revenge was swift and hot and angry, delivered in the form of a fist to the face.

“Friends don’t put friends in magic cages!” she bellowed, watching Nesterin stumble backwards.

She realised that neither Elandrin nor Sera nor Briala had ever really met and all of them were only loosely connected by her and, she supposed, by their race.

To an outside eye, Sera must have seemed so...well, so incredibly _Sera._

“It’s fine,” she said to the others “I really deserved that one.”

“Too right you did. Come on, let’s get out of this shit water once and for all.”

That was the amazing comfort of Sera, really. The way that she could solve and resolve  a hurt with a pie in the face, a plate of shit cookies or a punch in the face. Nesterin was incredibly jealous of her.

* * *

The old human adage that it was “always darkest before the dawn” had never necessarily rang true to Nesterin.

That suggested something quick. Something transformative. As if the morning was a revelation from the heavens. But those who actually spent time outside in it, not trapped behind doors and under roofs, saw that darkness- and the light- always came encroaching by smallest of degrees.

Looking up, Nesterin saw the swirl of colours start to gently dapple the night sky. The stars themselves seemed sleepy, straining at the slowly approaching light, like tired, glassy eyes. As the dew and the mist started to creep across the grass and the trees, the air was sharp and clear and biting- completely  unlike the thick blankets usually associated with darkness.

The Dalish equivalent was probably: "the night is long and hard and full of suffering.And then the sun drags its broken carcass up agonisingly slowly and you’ll probably stub your toe on a branch. But be sure to remember all the elves who came before you and suffered and died so that you could have a toe to break to begin with’.

They set up a camp as far away from the city as they could drag their aching limbs and waterlogged clothes. Which ended up not being far at all, somewhere in the rocky hills just north of Val Royeaux.

There was mainly heathland on the hills, with a few dry scrubs here and there. Dry soil gave way to sliding gravel and the only cover came in the form of a few rising clumps, clustered with beech trees. It was, frankly, a terrible place to make camp, but the best that the landscape could offer them.

Starting a fire was the first priority, easily supplied by a sharp burst of magic and a bundle of brittle twigs. After that, they’d had to shuck off their stinking, soaked through clothing, to dry it near the fire, before a bitter chill got into their skin.

Sera, like Elandrin gamely stripped down to her underwear. Briala was hesitant, but was soon sitting in her stays and she shucked off her mask and headpiece along with it. Her hair was chin length and curly and her features were more delicate and girlish than Nesterin had expected- exacerbated by the cinnamon dusting of her freckles but undercut by the sharpness of her eyes and the dark circles underneath them.

Revekah, thankfully, also undressed herself too. Nesterin’s discomfort at dragging the woman through a sewer at the end of a chain would have only intensified if they’d had to forcibly strip her too. She had nothing on under the loose calico gown that the chantry had forced her into so she simply parked herself naked, defiant and daring, in front of the fire.

She carried herself exactly like Laisa just after she’d been caught with Elandrin. Another tug of worry for her sister pulled at Nesterin’s gut.

Revekah’s arm was still obviously frostbitten and deadened and painful. On the opposite side to where Nesterin’s mark had been, they might have been mirror images of one another.

Thanks to her amputation, Nesterin got undressed slower than the rest of them and tried to ignore the looks of discomfort her severed arm and the knotting tree trunks of her protruding bones got from the rest of them. But her remaining arm drifted around her middle self-consciously, cupping the twisting scars in the flesh just below her elbow whilst hiding the worst of her ribcage.

Elandrin had packed his supplies exactly like a Dalish elf in a bind, so that was at least something to be thankful for. Laying out his effects, he allowed Nesterin  to go through them and make an inventory of the tools, the pup tent which could be tied high in a tree and the foodstuffs in the little clay containers.

Dried meat, fermented cheese. A bladder flask and, though he took obvious care not to offer it to her, she knew there would be some weak beer about his person if water was scarce too.  

As she took up the last pot and she sniffed it, a flood of nostalgia washed over her and she looked up at Elandrin, her eyes going wide.

“Fenedhis, bloody ma ghilana, Elandrin. Where did you _find_ this in Val Royeaux?”

Elandrin laughed. “There’s no way you’d get Var-numin in Val Royeaux unless it had a sugar flower and a dollop of cream on top of it. I’ve kept it by for ages. It was a present from another clan.”

Curious, Sera took the pot unceremoniously from Nesterin’s hand. She got the faintest whiff of it and immediately recoiled.

“Ugh. What is _that_?”

“Bone jelly, ant embryos and a _bucket_ of salt. Var-numin. The bitter tears of our people,” Nesterin explained. “It’s honestly the worst thing you’ll ever put into your mouth.”

“It’s the first solid thing we Dalish ever eat. There’s a whole ceremony devoted to it. The keeper gives the baby a nice big spoonful after he’s ready to be weaned from his mother’s breast,” Elandrin added.

“You know, because a _baby_ should learn about despair nice and early,” Nesterin chuckled.

 _We never had such things,_ said Amaril. _I hope the Dalish don’t think that we were sitting around Arlathan eating bugs and slime._

_We don’t. The traditions of pain are all our own._

She remembered, once or twice, watching Deshanna perform the very same duty, usually to an infant who turned immediately puce, screaming bloody murder from all of the rage and betrayal.

Over the next couple of months, Alifanon’s baby, her niece, would be nearing that date. It seemed like only a handful of  months ago that she’d first heard about her sister’s expected child from Deshanna, and the taste of bitter tea had still been fresh on her tongue.

She did not like to try and calculate these things.

Instead, Nesterin scooped some of the Var-numin onto the edge of one of Elandrin’s knives and put it into her mouth. She gagged and swallowed and smiled at Sera,

“Try some.”

“That would be a stonking great _no._ Everything wrong with the Dalish in one frigging pot if you ask me."

She meant it to be an insult, but Elandrin and Nesterin only laughed. It wasn't like any Dalish would ever disagree with that one.

“We could always feed it to Revekah. That might get her to talk,” said Elandrin quietly. He cast a dark look towards the fire, where Fen’Harel’s agent was illuminated by an orange glow.

* * *

 But Revekah’s first dance was already promised to Briala.

After their clothes had dried (but still stank of shit) and were back on, she prepared to question the agent. The old spymaster- now Marquise of the Dales (though it was likely Gaspard was already moving to rectify that situation) seemed fairly confident that her techniques would yield better results than the chantry had done in all the weeks she’d been their captive.

“Will you follow my lead?” Briala asked Nesterin quietly, wearing her mask once more, as she fetched Elandrin’s bladder flask. Nesterin agreed, though she could not bring herself to hope for much in the way of answers yet.

Briala placed herself next to Revekah, on the ground next to the fire. Nesterin hung back warily, watching in case Revekah lashed out and tried to escape. Honestly, it was unsettling that she hadn’t even tried it yet.

“My name is Briala and I think, quite inadvertently, I have been involved with the Dread Wolf for years,” she confessed and offered Revekah a little of Elandrin’s food. Revekah did not take it.  “Just like the Lady Herald, here. If you talk to us, we will not be a threat to your cause. We simply want to find two people we both care about very deeply.”

Revekah studied her fingernails and then started picking at her teeth.

“I’m going to ask you a few questions. The answers will be of no significance to anyone but us. They will not harm your plan. All they will do is help us and then _we_ can help you in return.”

When Revekah started to bubble up spit in her mouth, any shred of Nesterin’s confidence vanished entirely. She simply felt fortunate she wasn’t sitting in the splash zone.

“It’s almost morning. I’m getting hungry,” Briala said, looking up at the pink sky and speaking conversationally. “I wonder- perhaps you could tell me? What does the Dread Wolf have for breakfast?”

“ _What_?”

It caught Revekah’s attention. She turned to look at the Orlesian elf, frowning.

“For breakfast. What does he eat?” Briala repeated.

Nesterin frowned too. She knew she’d said that she would go along with Briala’s lead but this seemed like a strange and pointless line of questioning to go down. If she wanted to know any of those details she could cluck at Nesterin like a hen- just like her sisters had done- at a later date. Preferably when Laisa _wasn’t_ in danger.

“Don’t you know?” Briala prompted, when Revekah failed to answer a second time.

“Solas drank tea- he hated it, though,” Nesterin interrupted. “But I really don’t-”

“Anything else?” asked Briala, still only looking at Revekah.

“Yes,” Nesterin snapped impatiently. “Sometimes there were these little buns, I don’t remember what they’re called. Small. Light pastry. Sugar on the top.”

 _I thought Briala was supposed to be a master spy?_ Sniffed Amaril. _She seems like an idiot. You should cut her loose. We should go on without her._

_Do I detect a hint of jealousy, Amaril?_

“Chouquette?” asked Briala.

“That sounds familiar,” Nesterin agreed. “One of the cooks at Skyhold was Orlesian. Solas was ...very austere with himself most of the time. But his resolve didn’t always last.”

That was putting it mildly. And that failure of resolve usually came with a kiss so desperate that it almost _hurt,_ and tugging and twisting and their two bodies clashing.  A thought came to her with a snap of pain: she loved him at the very core of herself- as if she’d been _made_ to do it -and in return he saw her as basically a pastry with sugar on the top.

“What about this one, Revekah. What is his favorite book?”

Revekah said nothing again. Her eyes narrowed.

“He liked verse most,” Nesterin said, filling the silence with an answer that came easily to her. And brought with it memories that flooded her mind like drowning.

“Not highly structured poems like sonnets, but long sweeping ballads that have strong cadences and pretty rhythms to the language.”

The rhythm of her own words began to feel ugly. They tasted bitter. Briala stopped looking at Revekah and turned back to Nesterin as she asked:

“His favourite thing to do in the evening?”

“He painted. If there was time. Or planned what to paint, on loose pieces of paper. Until I made him a book,” Nesterin pulled an ugly face. An ugly feeling pulled at _her,_ “He painted the walls of the rotunda at Skyhold with the most amazing frescos. Of the choices I made and the things that I did.  I used to think he painted them as a gift to me…”

Intelligent and artful. Sensitive and strong, he used to stand so tall. He made her think of Knights and Deshanna’s stories about how their people were supposed to be.

“How does he sleep?”

“Deeply ,”said Nesterin. The memories seemed to be falling out of her now. She only had to open her mouth and they came tumbling out. “Quieter than whispers. And solid, like a stone.”

“Did he fall asleep holding you?”

“ _Yes_.”

He’d put his hands into her hair and find fat curls to twist his fingers through. She’d bury her nose into his neck and feel the race of his pulse beneath his skin.

She loved it when he came to her and _inside_ of her. She loved to watch him paint. She loved to watch him heal and talk about spirits and speak so kindly with Cole. She loved his hands, his bemused/amused smile, that arch and icy twinkle in his eyes and the sweet taste of sugar buns when his mouth was on hers.

She loved him even though he had left and left and left her. She loved him even though he kept himself so far away. She loved him even though he was only a memory. She loved him even though he had taken her face and her arm and her sanity and her sister. She loved him even as she sorted through the bones all along the path of death he had left behind him. She loved him, simply. She loved him still.

“Briala …” Nesterin trailed off weakly, chewing on her lip.

Who’s interrogation was this?

Why did Nesterin feel like the only one being tortured?

Though, apparently she wasn’t. Revekah curled up her fist into a ball and snarled at Nesterin, “You think you know so much? I’ve known him my whole life.”

“I think she knows him better than you ever will,” Briala responded smoothly. “I think she’s the only one alive who really does.”

 _Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it,_ Nesterin wanted to scream.

She wanted to turn tail and get as far and as deep into the clump of trees that surrounded them and drink and drink the last of the hip flask.

If she drank, she would die. If she didn’t drink, she would die. If she loved Solas, the whole world would end. If she didn’t love him, _her_ whole world would end....

“Not true,” Revekah insisted.

“She probably knows more about his plan, even. I mean, do you even know where he takes the elves he disappears?”

“He sends them underground, to the Vimmark mountains,” sniffed Revekah.

And then Nesterin suddenly saw it.

The shape of Briala’s plan began to fall into place; Celene must have been more formidable than Nesterin ever gave her credit for. Briala must have made for a dangerous spy….

“To what end?”

“To wait. And because there’s something deep below that he needs.”

 _Deep below,_ Nesterin committed to her memory. She sifted through what those words could mean.

_Darkspawn, the blight, titans and dwarves. Tarem’an and the memories of Amaril. A dying soldier who had not seen the sun..._

“You really think the elves who left Val Royeaux last night will be going to the Vimmark mountains? You really have been kept in the dark,” scoffed Briala.

“If they were called away from their positions, then there is no other place they would be!” insisted Revekah.

“Any agent of Fen’Harel would know that,” Briala dismissed. “But you know nothing of the larger picture, you don’t have any idea of how we came into magic.”

The sharp intake of breath from Revekah suggested that Briala had pushed her too far and given away her own strategy. She narrowed her eyes and pointed at Nesterin,

“You should ask _her_ about that.”

Briala looked back at her, but Nesterin shook her head. That first night when Bel had shown her the little purple sparks of electricity in her finger seemed so long ago, but she was still no closer to an answer.

But...was she? _Ask her?_   Nesterin had no idea what that could possibly mean...

Sensing that her plan had all but worn itself out, Briala’s questioning got quicker and more desperate.

“Do you have access to the eluvian network?”

But now Briala had given away ground and Revekah was trying to claw back the upper hand, smiling and then laughing her cold, cruel laugh.

“If you step one foot in the crossroads, you’ll all be killed,” she said.

“What happened to Felassan?” Briala demanded, finally.

“He failed,” Revekah crowed. “He put petty people and their petty problems above his duty.”

Under the mask, it was impossible to read Briala’s face. But her posture was stiff and she looked like she might snap.

“Since he seemed to like this broken, fleshly plane so much... the Dread Wolf  killed his presence in the fade,” Revekah went on. “He’s a drooling moron now. A _warning._ ”

Solas was poison.  That was all there was to it, Nesterin decided. The same poison she poured desperately down her throat to get by.

“It’s _very_ funny to throw rocks at him….” Revekah finished.

She was lost in her own own series of terrible revelations, but Nesterin should have been paying better attention to Briala. With a wounded, animal noise, Briala dove at Revekah, a ready dagger in her hands.

It was hard to fight against the flailing with only one hand. Revekah scrambled on her back to stop the dagger and Briala scrambled to find a clear line to send it into Revekah’s skull. Nesterin tugged but she wasn’t strong, and the two of them were too close together for her to effectively cast a barrier.

“Help me!” she called out to Elandrin and Sera: she sincerely doubted dragging the corpse of an agent to the Mountains would make for an effective bargaining tool for her sister.

Eventually, all three of them- well _two_ , Sera seemed more interested in how the fight would play out- managed to drag Briala off.

“Take a walk with me, Briala,” Nesterin insisted in the scramble, trying to get her as far away as possible. But Briala wouldn’t or couldn’t listen.

And so, summoning whatever parts were still left of a woman who had once commanded an army using the techniques of ancient elven warriors and defeated an ancient magister and closed a gaping great hole in the sky, she gritted her teeth and she barked,

“BRIALA. WALK.”

* * *

 “Teach me a spell,” Briala demanded, her mask still grotesquely askew- as if she had two faces and one of them was peeling off. “Something that _hurts_ _people_.”

They had walked from one side of the small clump of trees, right through to the other, standing at the top of a hill and looking down towards a narrow, barren valley between all of the rocks. There may have been a river running through it once, but it had dried up. She could see the dessicated corpse of an August Ram lying somewhere at the bottom of it.

 _Wolves_. Brilliant.

Nesterin knew that she should probably keep Briala on learning defensive magic whilst Revekah was still in range, but she could understand the impulse to hurt and burn and destroy something. And fire was _her_ element still and something she’d been struggling to find an outlet for.

She also wanted to get at the last of the alcohol she had on her, in the form of the hip flask lifted from the Val Royeaux jail. And she couldn’t do that unless Briala had her eyes closed without feeling a terrible, burning sense of shame.

Some time after she started showing Briala how to cast flashfire and the alcohol had started to take effect, Nesterin turned to the Orlesian elf and felt safe enough to say,

“You were amazing, by the way.  There’s no way I would have found about about the Vimmark mountains without you…”

“I’m sorry to make you do that. It must have hurt to talk about. But I  thought she’d get jealous and desperate. Who better to torture her with than the woman the Dread Wolf loves?”

“Remember the slow arrow? Please don’t put any faith in the theory that he loves me,” said Nesterin weakly.

 _I love him. I love him. I love him,_ sang her heart and it was truly frightening to her.

She had worried for so long about keeping her promise. Loving him until the end of this terrible road had once felt impossible, but now it seemed inevitable.

And by gods and by men alike, what sort of monstrous creature would a love like that even look like?

“I’m going get Felassan back from these people. If what Revekah says is true...I’m going to _kill_ him for what he did to my hahren.”

Looking down at her feet, Briala began to tremble. Something about it reminded her of her sisters, and made her miss Laisa like a stomachache. So, without really thinking about it, Nesterin stepped forwards and embraced the other woman.

She felt her stiffen, and then soften and then give over and give into it, sobbing against Nesterin’s shoulder.

 _Solas hated the idea of tranquility...would he really do that to someone he fought with, and who saved his life?_ Nesterin asked Amaril, allowing Briala her moments to grieve.

_People don’t always make sense- not even to themselves. And they don’t always keep their morals when it comes to people they love.. Like when you killed Dedrick but you couldn’t leave Blackwall…._

_Conscripting someone to the Grey Wardens is_ **_not_ ** _the same._

_Inflicting someone with the blight and sentencing them to a slow death by darkspawn….it’s not great is it?_

_So what? This is  his idea of a_ **_compromise_ ** _? That bodes really fucking well for me and my world,_ Nesterin thought desperately _._ _You’re saying that if he really loves me, he won’t be able bring himself to kill me and he’ll make me into his soulless pet? That’s my best case scenario, is it?_

 _He might not be able to,_ Amaril mused. _I mean...I’m in here too. Maybe if your soul was kicked out of your body, mine would stay instead._

_Less of that, please. You’re starting to sound like a demon…._

“We’ll go to the Vimmark mountains.  We’ll find my sister and we’ll get to the bottom of this. And then we can give Felassan peace or we can give him vengeance, whatever you think is best,” Nesterin promised. “Alright?”

Briala nodded. Something horrible in the back of Nesterin’s skull whispered,

_You’re lying to her. She’ll never get the vengeance she needs while you still have breath in your body._

“I was taught to think like the Dread Wolf,” said Briala, finally when she collected herself. “And it’s probably a good thing that I fell so far short in the end. But for what it’s worth…”

Leaning in to her, Briala gave her a swift, soft and achingly affectionate kiss on her cheek.

It would have been kinder if Briala had stabbed her.  

* * *

 After returning Briala to the camp, Nesterin sought out Sera. She fudged up some excuse about wanting to catch her up with the revelations, ex inquisitor to ex member of the inquisition, but she had another pressing matter to deal with….

“You don’t believe that horseshit do you?” scoffed Sera once Nesterin told her about the mountains.

“Briala played her like a fiddle.”

“It could still be a trap.”

“I don’t have a choice either way,” sighed Nesterin.“And even a trap tells you something about the trapper.,.”

“Why are all of your plans so mad and desperate these days? It’s like all you want is to die.”

“Because I _am_ mad and desperate these days. The fact I might die is just an enjoyable side benefit,” Nesterin laughed.

She laughed and she laughed like a sad, old crazy person.

When she was finished, she sat heavily on the dirt and patted a place upon it for Sera.

“You’re loving this,” Sera sneered. “Grass beneath your bum and mud all up your arsehole.”  But she sat down too.

For a moment, she listened to the stuttering shrieks of the birds and tried to name them. A starling, a chaffinch, a thrush. And others that she couldn’t place, ones that she had forgotten.

“Did Lady Emmald ever try to get sober?” Nesterin asked.

“Oh yeah, all the frigging time. _This is it Sera, I promise_ and then she threw money at healers and doctors and hedgemages and allsorts. She chugged back tonic and ate green things and she shouted and she shook. And it never never never lasted.”

“I should have gone with Cullen, shouldn’t I?”

It would have been nice, Nesterin thought. She could almost imagine up the sanctuary. All clean and white, with billowing curtains. Maybe a courtyard. And Cullen to talk her through. Not disgusted, or judgemental or cruel  just...understanding.

“And finally, the penny drops!”

“Well, a healer came to see me in jail and said that  I’m probably going to die either way.... But I can’t go all the way back to the Free Marches like this. I can’t save my sister like this. I probably couldn’t save a _plant_ like this. And there isn’t much time. She could already be so far away...”

And the alcohol was running out already. And she needed to find a way forward. And she didn’t think that she could handle all of the different poisons churning up inside of her anymore...

“It always took Lady Emmald a week to get off it properly.”

“It will take me two to even get close to the Vimmarks if I can’t use the eluvians and I stay in this state.”

“You’re sure as shit not going to want to do _any_ travelling.”

“I’ll buy transportation. I can pull all of the gems out of my spirit blade and trade them for a horse and a buggy.”

“You’ll still probably die before you get to your sister.”

“Well I’ll just have to try my hardest not to until then,” she said drily.

Sera let out a sceptical noise and Nesterin added, confidently,

“I can get all of those tonics and potions from a herbalist like Lady Emmald did. And Elandrin can heal me as and when I need it.”

“You’re going to puke and cry and puke and shit your pants and yell and shake and puke and want to die.”

“Sounds like that time we all got food poisoning our first night in Griffon Wing Keep. The darkspawn got into the water supply. Corpsey water makes _everything_ terrible.”

“You’re just doing this because you want to punish yourself. You don’t really _want_ to get sober.”

Nesterin pressed her lips together and stopped smiling. Sera, in her fashion, was very good at getting to the heart of things.

Maybe she'd never get over her Dalish impulses. Since her cradle she had been nurtured to develop a taste for bitter tears. 

“It won’t stick if you don’t want it,” Sera warned. “You’ll be back on the bottle in days.”

“I’ll be out in the middle of nowhere. I won’t have a choice. And I owe it to my sister to try.”

“It’s a shitty thing to ask a friend. Hey, Sera? Remember how I put you in a cage of pissing _lightning_ after you told me about your shit drunk mum? How’d you like me to re-enact the worst time of your life, out in the middle of frigging nowhere with me and my most _elfiest_ mates to go fuck knows where and do fuck knows what?”  

“Oh I have much elfier mates, Sera you have _no_ idea…” said Nesterin, thinking about the voices from the well. But she scooched a little closer to her friend and said softly,

“You don’t need to come.  I don’t want you to see _any_ of this, not even if I’m a fraction as bad as Lady Emmald. My sister leaving was all my fault and it has nothing to do with you. You’ve already helped me so much by getting me out. And...you, know, everything else.  I mean it, thank you.”

“Yeah, well,” Sera sniffed. She clenched her jaw and shuffled about with her arrows and then she said. “You’re the best chance I’ve got against not being possessed by a frigging demon.”

It was not, in all honesty, the largest of the day’s revelations, but Nesterin still sucked in a breath to launch into whatever she could say to be a comfort.

“No,” Sera insisted, pulling her hands up defensively. “Don’t talk yet. But. Soon. Yeah? Almost time to come clean and sort out all of our shit, yeah?”

So they were all going to the Vimmark mountains. All of them sitting on secrets, all of them fucked up in their own special ways. Fuelled by rage and hate and love and misery, on a stupid suicidal mission that would almost definitely involve puking and crying and shouting and shitting and puking.

But at the end of it all. It was all they could do, all that _anyone_ really could do: put one foot in front of the other, keep on walking, and try to find a way forward.

“Here’s to our big elfy adventure!” Nesterin teased.

“I will still shoot you in the face.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey, look who's getting sober for all the wrong reasons. I. WONDER. IF. THIS.WILL.END.WELL?
> 
> Also I think I'd like to officially change my otp from lavellan/solas to elf ladies who support each other?


	36. A Dream of Amaril (4)

It starts with the smallest of things.

Amongst the dirt, straining out of the dark, we find the chiselled white face of a single cyclamen.

We spoil it terribly. The housekeeper has it moved into a mosaic pot. Mythal’s servants feed it rich compost from the kitchens. They inspect its leaves closely for aphids and I even catch some of them speaking to it in whispers; telling it their secrets, murmuring their prayers.

In the same spot as the first, its brothers follow. One, two, three new white faces and then whole clumps like a crowd.

We catch an undersized orange butterfly near the flowers one day. For a terrible moment, the excitement is so great that I fear the butterfly will be crushed.  But it flutters away, free, into the air, the brightness of its wings like burning fire.

Away in the distance, we begin to hear the calls of birds, the cries of animals and the rustle of the wind in the leafy trees. We start to leave the windows open again, we unlock and throw open the front door. We begin to take walks amongst the grounds- to assess what’s left of the arboretum, to stand at the banks of the vast lake, to sweep the decay from the floor of the grottos and the follies.

Then, one day, someone drops the remnants of a war on us.

Easily one hundred soldiers occupy the front lawn. Men and women, most of them only half dressed in golden armour gone dull with thick layers of dust, sit and stand and lie about the grass. They play card games and make wagers and practise fighting, sending shuddering sparks of magic into the air.

Generally they do whatever they can to pass the time.

“Oh, let’s go out and see!” say three of the girls in the dormitory, excitedly.

Like the flowers, we have slowly begun to creep into our blooming. Our bodies inch closer to the sky, our breasts have started to swell. The presence of the soldiers, standing tall and strong has some of them practically frothing at the mouth.

I am not particularly interested in the dusty men and women.

But I keep the dying soldier’s marbles in a box underneath my bed. And I am curious about him. Curious about whether he sits among the other soldiers, or whether he ended up doing what he seemed so determined to do and has been laid to rest in a lonely grave inside of a mountain.

At the top of the high stone steps, near the grand front entrance, we find the Housekeeper in consultation with several of the soldiers. She’s pacing and irritated, looking down over the lawns and trees. They are only just beginning to turn green again, and the presence of so many feet and the tents and the griffins will trample any of the delicate plants that have begun to grow.

“And still no Mythal in all of this?” asks the Housekeeper, throwing up her hands bitterly. My dormitory mates and I hover nervously in the doorway. The Housekeeper in a mood usually means a barrage of chores and we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.

“The talks at Arlathan keep her quite occupied,” admits one of the soldiers. It takes me a moment to recognise him...

 _My shabby apostate. My quietly arrogant, fade-touched hedge mage. My cold and warm and cold and burning lover. My softly spoken, soul of a poet, mind of an artist, heart and blood and oxygen. He was never real,_ she whispers to me sadly.

Compared to the rest of them, Solas’ armour is polished and shining and bright. His back is straight and he keeps his hands behind him as he looks over the fields of men. He wears a brown pelt over one of his shoulders, and the hilt of a sword at his hip. Pinned to the pelt is a large, beautifully intricate medal that glitters.

_It looks like Mythal’s vallaslin._

“I’m expected there myself once our soldiers are seen home,” he says.

“He’s going to get himself another shiny medal to go with that one, you watch,” teases Felassan, also dressed in clean armour, though of a quite markedly less ostentatious kind. He carries a beautifully crafted bow slung over his back.

_He’s going to destroy you, Felassan. He’s going to crush your soul in the fade._

Solas still has his friends about him. The red-almost-pink- haired man gives him a slap on the back and the woman with dark curls rolls her eyes as she sits like a feral cat on the balustrades. All of them are alive and all of them are cleaner. All of them seem washed in the glow of a shining glory. Only Valour looks the same as it did on that night of mud and blood and crying, an ephemeral shape clad in armour with no face.

The benefits of not taking a physical form, I suppose.

“What am I supposed to do?” frets the Housekeeper. “You can’t expect me to feed you and all the servants _and_ the little ones?”

“We have enough supplies. We won’t be here for long.” Felassan soothes. “Better put Valour guarding the door to the baths, though. There might be a riot,” he adds to Solas, out of the corner of his mouth.  

And Solas laughs. A loud burst of musical laughter that has his whole face breaking out into a smile. It is not _my_ heart that squeezes and strains to see it.

“But we did bring gifts,” says Felassan, leaning to the Housekeeper with conspiratory wink. He seems to pull foliage and purple blooms from the air, fashioned into a pretty bouquet, “For you, my darling dear, because you are as wonderful as these flowers.”

“Hmmmph,” says the Housekeeper, sceptically. But she accepts her flowers, minutely bending her head to smell them.

“And some things for the children,” adds Solas. He looks past the Housekeeper, towards us, as if to indicate that he knows we’ve been listening all along.

I look at him. He looks, briefly, at me. But his grey eyes have only a slightly steely twinkle to them- he’s completely forgotten who I am.

“Figs!” squeals one of the girls behind me, as a large crate of fruit is produced.

They rush forward to inspect the cornucopia, picking up fat grapes that sparkle like jewels, handling the plump pomegranates and the delicate fuzz of the apricot flesh.

“Bribery! Pure bribery!” sniffs the Housekeeper.

* * *

 

With juices running down our mouths and sticky fingers, we go to wander amongst the soldiers below. The Housekeeper warns us to mind ourselves, but she looks happy- quite in spite of herself. More of Mythal’s servants are coming out of the house now too, to say a cheery hello to the soldiers on the steps, to shake their hands and to gawk at the ones on the lawn.

Spirits seem to want to drift around Solas, Charity amongst them. He smiles and allows it to smooth down his fur pelt and straighten his medal, before remembering himself and affecting the slightly detached, straight-backed posture of a leader.

There are songs being sung on the lawn. The rich music of high voices and low rumbling drifts up through the trees. Even the great griffons, with their shining, enormous heads and lazily flicking tails join in with the singing and there is magic in it. It makes the air smell rich with the scent of flowers and briefly changes the dead leaves in the earth from brown to gold.

We wave at the soldiers as we go by and they look at as with the same wide eyed, wonder that we do them.

“How old are you?” a few of them ask us. We tell them our ages and they laugh and laugh and laugh.

We are so new to them. New and bright and blooming. A bundle of little cyclamen, finding our own ways out of the dirt.

 _Who_ will I be? There is so much promise, so much potential. I _like_ to do it this way, working forwards and not back through my lost and forgotten memory. To see me like this, I might have been anyone, I might have been anything, might never have died at all.

The soldiers are a strange collective, I begin to notice. Spirits and men, marked for many gods- most Mythal, but there are others scattered here and there. Some of them are not as well dressed, and are loud and bawdy, drinking and dancing. Some of them, I see, are not actually marked at all. Their tattoos are only grease paint and they have already begun the business of rinsing them off.

“I don’t know how he did it. That position should have gone to someone with lands and people already. Not one of Mythal’s orphan pups,” says one such woman, sitting on a stool as a tattooed squire holds a basin for her. She looks up towards the house and sniffs.

“I hear he’s Mythal’s secret child,” says the man next to her. “With one of her scribes, or some such.”

“Or a raggedy dog she found in the woods.”

I hang back from my friends at the sound of this, and try to listen in.

“I hear he’s Mythal’s secret _lover._ ”

“Nah, he’s just another one of Elgar’nan’s ejections. Look at his face. They all are up there. Got by slaves and serving girls. What has become of us?”

 _It’s nice to see that the Dalish got one thing correct,_ says the voice in my head. _Namely sitting in circles and asking ‘what has become of us?’_

“They don’t call him the All Father for nothing, do they? _Heh_. Sprinkling his seed and hoping to get the flowers growing again…”

 _Sprinkling seed? I was_ **_marked_ ** _for Elgar’nan. I think I’m going to be sick._

_No. No. Wait.  I’m actually going to be sick…._

The world around me seems to tremble. But I push down into my memories and I push hard. The mind I inhabit is drifting, shaking and sick. It seems easier to control in this state and I use it to cling onto the side of my memories, dredging them up like water from a well.

“Speaking of sprinkling seed…” says one of the men. He stands up and looks directly at me. His almost white hair flows around his head, his eyebrows are sharp and slanted and I don’t like the way he smiles at me.

“Come here,” he commands me.

I hesitate and look back hoping that I can catch the attention of my friends.

“Come here at once,” he says again, and clicks his fingers, pointing to a spot on the ground.

A twist of magic flares from him and the air around me twines into a something like a rope about my waist.

“Did you know that we won a war for you?”

I shake my head. Cloistered away in the summer house, I didn’t even get to see the war until the dying soldier spat up stones all over the Petitioner’s chamber.

“Well, we did. You ought to say thank you. You ought to let us have a good look at what we were fighting for.”

I clamp my lips shut, and he tugs at the air. I step forward and stumble.

It gets a laugh from the assembled and I want desperately to run away and hide.

And then suddenly, a bright shield sails through the air, and comes to a halt in front of me.

It breaks the nasty little spell from around my waist and I look back and it’s Valour, facing down the other men.

“Mythals wards are _not_ for you,” it says firmly to the assembled. Then it looks down at me. “If you demand satisfaction, will you allow me to duel this man on your behalf?”

“No thank you,” I say weakly. “I just want to go back.”

“Then I will accompany you,” it says, nodding and removing the shield.

 _This isn’t like the other dreams,_ a panicked voice drifts in. _This isn’t a loose memory, it’s solid_ . _There’s too much detail. Too many voices. It hurts._ I press her back again. So that _she_ can get a taste of being ignored.

“A warning to you though, my friends and comrades,” Valour says to the assembled men. “We have fought in honour and in glory- but if you sully the good name of our fallen friends, our valiant leaders and especially any of those of whom Our Lady Mythal has taken under her protection with your fleshly _depravtiy,_ we shall surely come to blows.”

“Oh give it a rest Valour and go back to your dogs,” sniffs the blonde man. But he turns and sits back amongst his friends.

“My lady,” says Valour, bowing and offering me its arm.

I take it, though it has little more than the weight of my own courage slowly returning to me, and Valour leads me back up towards the house.

“Forgive them,” says Valour in a tremulous voice  as it looks over the fields of soldiers.

“They have not seen the sun for so many years,” it continues. “We were so low down in the dark of the mountains that I’m afraid my comrades were often forced to think of low down things too. Of cruelty and blood-lust and power and need. I hope that they will once again remember how we ought to be, and that true Valour is as compassionate as it is courageous.”

_This is too much now. I want to wake. I want my own body back, Amaril. I’m trembling, I’m sweating. I should get something to drink. Elandrin has some beer stowed away, I'm sure of it. I could steal it….it would stop the aching._

She tries to slap my memory from out of my hand. For a moment we see blurry shapes and bright lights. But I slap her back. I send a great rattle through her mind, and she falls back into my memory,shaking and retching and weeping.  

It’s night now and I’m walking towards the bath house.

The smell of rose petals drifts around my nose, mingled with soaps and steam and the faintest smell of sweat.

_Stop. Please. I need this to stop._

The walls are blue, the ceiling is high and curved. There are grand mosaic patterns stretching all across the floor. A series of rooms connect the baths.  From the hot springs to the icy plunge pool and the longer pleasure bath. And this is where we are going to stay.

_No. No this is my body. This isn’t fair._

_Don’t moan_ , I snap angrily. _I’m helping you and saving you from yourself. Would you really rather be trapped in your own head and memories over mine?_

I will feel sorry for it later. There are much worse people to be trapped inside and I daresay that the two of us have become friends now. But I miss my body. I miss the way that I felt things. The way that I sensed and spoke and thought.

Bathhouse duty is an unusual task for me, but the soldiers have been trekking mud across the halls towards the baths and dripping water back again all day and I happen to have drawn the short straw for fishing leaves, gravel and muck out of the tubs.

The baths are supposed to be closed but there are dim green lights flickering and reflecting the water. I stop and I crouch in the doorway to the hot springs, watching.

I was always so curious, wasn’t I? I liked to watch and listen and learn secrets. I was hungry for a world outside of the walls of Mythal’s house...but I never got it.  I died in the temple. They caught me trying to flee. They caught me and they held me down in that well and they left me to rot. Trapped inside the water for an eternity...

There’s a woman in the bathhouse, I can see her from my hiding spot. She’s dressed in the usual attire we wear to work in the summerhouse; a loose dress, unadorned and light blue with flowing sleeves.

But I don’t recognise her.

I would have remembered someone like her; she’s achingly beautiful. Graceful and ample with delicately slanted blue eyes, a full mouth and long, honey-blonde hair, reaching right down to the full curve of her backside.

At the sound of another’s voice she smiles, a filthy, flirty smile full of promise and sashay’s forward like an animal in heat.

The body I occupy would know the voice anywhere. She curls her arm around her aching stomach and I hear her think, _you’ve trapped me in an actual nightmare, Amaril. Thank you very much._

Smoothly and easily, Solas pulls himself out of the bath. Amongst the rising steam, he stands proudly naked and it appears that he is in the best of his blooming too- muscled and strong, though a little too pale and a little too thin from the fighting, with softer skin that is less freckled and folded and scarred.

Rifling playfully through his discarded tunic and armour and furs, the woman finds the medal. She picks it up and goes to him, holding it against his bare chest.

“Yes, oh yes, I like this _very_ much,” she smiles, speaking softly, her eyes full of sin.

The soldier smiles wolfishly.

 _This is payback for all the nights I made you spend in the White Spire, isn't it?  S_ he says in my head.

_This is your own body’s terrible reckoning, not mine..._

“It’s for bravery,” he says, stepping forwards boldy to close the distance between them.

“It’s pretty.”

“I don’t fight for pretty medals. This heavy thing is little more than a crude rock compared to you,” he slides a finger across her cheek.

“Oh. _Stop it_ ,” she practically purrs.

“Forgive me. I haven’t seen stars in many years. And your eyes...even the moons pale in comparison,” he says, and he moves in swiftly to kiss her.

Laughing, the woman darts her head away from him and his kiss, moving all of her attention back to the medal, “Mythal must love you to give you something like this.”

Solas huffs, but he is not necessarily displeased by her withdrawals and feigned refusals. I can tell from his eyes that he likes the dance of it.

 _And I can tell from the fact that you haven’t looked away_ **_once_ ** _that you used to be a little_ **_creep_ ** _. Amaril the little creeping, Peeping Tom._

_I was your equivalent of an adolescent. Do you not remember those first, curious, stirrings? Partly made of fear and shame, but also of a distant pleasure lurking somewhere at the heart of it._

“Mythal does look on me with favour, yes,” he explains. “I worked and I fought and I clawed my way up from an operative to a commander. And then I took back Tarem’an from the jaws of defeat. She knows I’ll make for an excellent second in command. I don’t disagree.”

“But why would Mythal need a second in command? The war is over, isn’t it?

“For now.”

“You’re not happy the war is over,” she states, her lovely narrow eyes watching his expression.

“I like to fight. I like to strategize. I like to conquer,” pushing his body against hers, he whirls her smoothly around and pins her against the wall with her back to him. “I’m very good at it,” he rumbles, coming to move his hands against the flares of her hips.

“And so modest,” she sighs, shifting her body to press against him. “No wonder Mythal is entranced.”

“She won’t be the only one,” he promises in a heavy whisper against her neck. “When I’ve finished with you, you’ll do more than give me a medal.”

I do look away then, finally, somewhat nervous that I have pushed too far. I like to hide and collect things and, like my friends, I pretend to be nearly grown. But I was frightened of the soldier with his magic ropes on the lawn, and I am frightened now too.

I liked it when Valour let me loop my arm around it, though, and the little flare of courage that came back to me. So I try to remember that feeling.

Fortunately the woman speaks again, and I draw my head up to listen to her.

“It really is a very nice, shiny medal,”she says, he’s kissing her shoulder, her neck and pushing down her dress and... _please stop it, Amaril_ ….but the blonde woman doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to him, as she twists the medal this way and that.

“But perhaps your mistress ought to have made it into a collar?”

That question changes the atmosphere in the room so suddenly I hardly have time to take a breath.

Solas stops what he’s doing and immediately steps backwards, his face a picture of fury.

He’s still exposed, and still naked, with his armour cast aside on the floor, but he wastes no time in sending a white pulse of dispelling magic across the baths.

It makes the candles flicker and the bath water churn up like a pot on the stove, sloshing over the sides. It changes the shape of the pretty girl in front of him.

A enormous yellow creature stands before him in the bath house. I can only see the back of it. It has an arched, feline spine, a flicking tail and huge, very sharp claws. The heave of it’s chest and the rasp of it’s breath seems laboured and strange. I know that now is the time to start running, but somehow I cannot tear myself away.

“Very funny,” Solas snarls. “ _Get_ _out_.”

“Little Solas, I made your fleshly body stand to attention!” purrs the creature.

“Yes,” he sniffs, clenching his jaw. “You made a very attractive shape and I have been underground for decades. I wouldn’t say it was a masterful trick. Get out.”

“--- sends their blessing and their congratulations on your success,” the creature says a name, but I do not remember it. Only a muffled noise like the breath of a wind comes out from its throat. “They want to speak with you.”

“Leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to anyone.”

“We have heard that they call you the Pride of Elgar’nan now.”

Solas grits his teeth and clenches his fist, turning his knuckles almost white, “I fought and I bled and I _earned_ my title.”

“It is a loathsome and low insult and somewhere inside of you, you know it.”

“I am _proud_ of it.”

“You think they respect you? You think you have _friends_?” The creature laughs. “You must never forget that no matter what you do, or how hard you try, you will always be hated. You will always be a slave amongst these people.”

“Leave,” he hisses. “Leave me alone, or I swear this conversation will end badly for you.”

A spark of magic sputters as a warning in his fist and the creature complies with an icy growl,

“Very well. But know this, dear little Solas, sooner or later you will have to make a choice.”

And then the creature seems to blow through the air like leaves, melting into the mana around us. It leaves the faintest stench of something that I will only know after I am dead and rotting in a well.

Solas keeps his back straight and his fists clenched until the last trace of it is surely gone.

Then he crumples.

He bends low, he lets out a gasp and stares at his feet. He goes about desperately bashing on his brain as if he’s trying to force an elusive thread of a thought into his head.

I step backwards, convinced he’s going to leave soon, through exactly the same place that I am standing. But my step on the mosaic calls attention to my positions and his senses are razor sharp.

He looks up. He sees me and he seems to _sigh_ . It comes accompanied by a look of recognition. And then I _definitely_ run.

* * *

I have nightmares about the creature.

 _All I have are nightmares. Waking and dreaming, dying and living. My arm...my sister...my body...my child...my legacy...my inquisition...my friends...my love...my life. What have I done to myself? What did I promise?_ **_Who_ ** _did I even promise it to?_

I have nightmares about the creature and the dying soldier and the very idea of a war below the earth, trapped in darkness, clawing to find a way through. I am quite sure that I am going to be hurt in my sleep. I don’t think that I am going to die, though, we Elvhen _never_ think we are going to die. But I am...I am...I am...I am...

I’m a wreck for the rest of the next day. Over breakfast, over chores, over lunch and the chittering of my friends about the soldiers, I tremble and I twitch and wait. But he cruelly keeps himself away and hidden until finally- _finally..._

He’s sitting on my bed. In the dormitory. Where all of Mythal’s strays sleep and grow and reach out of the dirt like the first of the flowers after the dark.

The soldiers said he was one of us, _he_ told me we were kin, and he certainly seems at home amongst the places where we mark our growing heights on the wall, where we whisper and crawl into bed with one another, giggling at the cold touch of someone else’s feet.

“You’re not allowed to be in here,” I say when I see him. “I swear I’ll scream. I’ll call for Valour. Valour will protect me.”

“Valour is one of my dearest friends, we fought and very nearly died together. There’s very little you could do to turn it against me,” he points out. And then he shifts on my bed  and adds seriously, “But I promise, I’m not here to harm you. You didn’t tell anyone about my friends’ desertion.”

“I didn’t think you’d remembered me,” I say weakly.

“I remember you, Amaril. You gave me water when I thought I was dying. You talked to me so I wasn’t alone. Thank you.”

No one remembers me. Not for thousands and thousands of years. I was only a servant, lost to history, lost to the bottom of the Well of Sorrows, in rot and in ruin. Until I forced my way through and to the front of the mind that contains me...

_I see the little things. It’s my biggest weakness. Everyone always told me to look towards a larger goal. Everyone always told me that I couldn’t help everyone, and I couldn’t carry all of that weight and that it would hurt me and kill me to try. And it almost certainly will. I can feel it.  But Deshanna taught me that that a clan is only ever it’s people. That an ocean is only a million drops of rain…._

And in that moment   _he_ saw it too. He saw me, though I was small. Just a little flower growing out from the cracks in the temple.

“But we do need to talk. Particularly about how you like sneaking and snooping about in the dark. It’s not a very good habit for someone so young.”

He drops a box onto my bed. _My_ box. Filled up with all of my precious things. The first thing he takes out of it is the small leather pouch. He holds it up to me, in an accusatorial fashion.

“You _gave_ me those marbles. You said I could have them,” I counter.

“And you’ve kept them close and hidden for the whole of the war,” he says sharply. Then he picks through my box and picks up a hanky. “What is this?”

I clench my fist. The cook gave it to a scullery maid but she dropped it on the floor and broke the cook’s heart. So I took it instead. I say nothing. It is _their_ secret.

“And this?”

It’s one of the last of the old flowers, before the war. Pressed and dried around a sheet of paper. One of Mythal’s attendants gave up hope that she would ever come back, and he left it, bundled up in a prayer at the end of the petitioner’s chamber. I took it too.

I say nothing. It’s _his_ secret.

“There’s a whole box of stolen secrets here,” Solas comments. “That conversation you were snooping on? I would be very grateful if you were to put it into your box  of secrets and keep the lid tightly closed.”

And the memories around me begin to drip and swirl like droplets of wet paint.

 _One night down,_ I say to the rising of the dawn, and the blinking of her eyes slowly open. She’s already fighting the urge to vomit. _How many more did Sera say we had left to go?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey what's that sound? I think it might be the last remnants of anything close to canon passing us by....


	37. Elfroot

In a village, just outside of the city, Nesterin managed to pick up a shabby little cart, a shabby little rabicano and the nasty flare of a temper. Snapping at Sera and Briala, and even Revekah and Elandrin made her feel so incredibly shabby too.

Shabby and sloppy and stupid, that’s what Deshanna would have said right now. Nesterin could easily picture her. Sitting cross legged on her mat and brewing a pot of tea, her mouth set into a thin line as she shook her head and looked so utterly disappointed.

To keep her mind off drinking, Nesterin made an inventory of every mistake and misstep she’d made since- well- since her arm had been removed in a haze of pain and grief and anaesthesia. Losing Laisa. Lying to Vivienne. Letting an alienage blow up. Allowing every alternative and opportunity her friends gave her to slip out of from her fingers. Giving up her Inquisition and her power. Stumbling around in circles, stomping about in the dark, drunkenly bruising herself against walls and fences and making herself bleed.

Creators, before that she’d been just as bad. Deshanna had told her to go to the Conclave to _listen_ ...so naturally she dove headfirst into a darkspawn’s dark ritual and went straight for the unknown ball of glowing green light at the centre of it. _Because that was how listening worked._ She should have been smarter and stopped and thought and asked better questions.

 

Questions like:

Maybe I shouldn’t immediately choose mages over Templars simply because I am a mage too?

Maybe I shouldn’t let Varric’s best friend die in the fade?

Maybe I shouldn’t watch an Empress die and then try to blackmail an Emperor into treating my people better? How could that ever have worked in the long term?

Maybe I shouldn’t sell my soul to something that literally has Sorrow in the title?

Maybe this man, who has evaded me and confounded me and lied me since the day we met, is not to be trusted with anything- let alone my heart?

 

Like walking through a world of tranquil indeed. And she had made herself the worst, _honestly_ , the very worst of them. Drinking and drinking and wallowing and smacking her head on enough trees so that she would never ever have to see the wood.

And if tranquillity could be cured with a willing spirit, the approach of her sobriety felt like she was grabbing at that spirit with her fist and trying to smash it inside of her guts. She could feel it shaking at the walls of her skeleton. Trying desperately to get back out again.

The clarity of Amaril’s dream that night was terrifying. Each scent and sound had a heavy quality and the feeling of Amaril, all around her, pressing on top of her, closing her in...it was nothing less than a violation.

 _I’m sorry,_ Amaril tried.

Nesterin rolled herself up in the blankets and pictured nothing but darkness. Darkness blotting out the swirling in her head, the aching in her body, the voices, the tugging, the shaking and the wanting. It didn’t work:

_But, you know, on the plus side. It looks as if he’s been hiding things from everyone he ever cared about for thousands of years. Lying and lying since before he was even Fen’Harel. So you were never-_

_Is this supposed to be comforting,_ she thought grimly. _You used me. You slapped me out of my own body._

_But...you were just going to poison it. I was doing it for your own good…_

And then she thought of the right question she should be asking. _Why the fuck are you here, Amaril? What are you?_

_The Well of Sorrows. A memory. A person. Someone who died. That’s all I know, I swear to you._

_But why you? Why these memories?_

_Because,_ came the howling collective of all of the voices, _drinking from the Well of Sorrows has bound you, irrevocably, as we all are, to the Will of Mythal._

It was Mythal’s _will_ then, that showed her nightmares of drowning, of a bitter war, of a bag of green marbles and a liar who wore her lover’s face.

The whole rotten pantheon, it seemed, was piling in to torture her.

It was incredibly unsportsmanlike of them, she thought, not to even take turns.

In the morning, Elandrin came in once or twice to check on her and the shabby little cart shook as it went over stones. She got a chance to throw up some more elfroot and then a chance to throw up beans and scraps of dried goat and then a chance to throw up boiled water. Her throat felt sore, her head pounded and she was so tired of looking backwards and over her shoulder that she wanted to burst into tears.

So she tried forward. And the Vimmark mountains. At Haven, amongst humans, she called herself a Free Marcher- though such thing, naturally, meant less to the Dalish who had no land. But it was the land she knew the best.  The long range of the Vimmarks stretched along the waking sea, and the looming shadow of them carved up the foggy grey landscape. There were wyverns on the mountains, and the traces of Grey Warden structures. August Rams trampled surefooted on the craggy paths, with thick coats to battle the bite of the cold high up on the rocks.

Corypheus had come from out of a prison in the Vimmark mountains. It was a good place to hide things that were old and terrible.

Or new and misguided, thought Nesterin. Revekah had said she was from the mountains too.

Briefly a memory of Laisa’s face flickered in front of her. Not from when she was sneering, but when she was laughing. Before Nesterin had gone to the conclave and all five of them were together.  Their sky behind trees was small. Cold snaps came and froze the Hahren and the halla. Mother’s died in aravals birthing dead babies. So they laughed and lived so fully in the quick moments. Making wagers when their fingers blistered making rope, fashioning snowballs out the sludge amongst the lichen, chewing dutifully on their Bitter Tears at ceremonies but also smirking behind the Keeper’s back during speeches.

Nesterin desperately wanted to get at Elandrin’s beer. Which she may have imagined to begin with.

When the cart stopped again, she pressed the feeling down by listening to the voices outside, as Sera, Briala and Elandrin stopped to make camp.

“I have Elfroot but we need milkweed,” she heard Elandrin say. Her vision might have been cloudy and her mouth might have tasted ashy, but she could always rely on the sharp knife- ears of an elf. “And Prophet’s Laurel, if we can get at it. Do you know how to find it?”

“No,” said Briala. “All of the city elf stereotypes are true. I hardly know a daffodil from a daisy.”

“I forget that neither of you were born Dalish.” Nesterin heard Elandrin sit heavily upon the ground. “What about you, Revekah? Are you Dalish? Could you sniff out a Vandal Aria if pressed to it?”

Revekah’s chain rattled, she murmured something. Possibly profane. And spat thickly onto  the ground.

“No, that’s not what you use it for,” Elandrin chuckled. “I think this might be the most interesting clan I’ve been with yet.”

Sera then blew a raspberry and Elandrin interpreted it, adding,

“Group of elves out in the woods? Walking with no clear end in sight and with the pressure of a forgotten past on our backs? Seems pretty Dalish to me.”

“I have an end,” said Briala grimly. Nesterin could clearly picture her, sitting as tensely as an alley cat, polishing her dagger in preparation.

“And I don’t give two stuffed monkeys about your elfy past.”

“I’ll make Dalish elves out of all of you yet,” Elandrin threatened. Nesterin grimaced. It was in no way the best thing to say to either of the two women he was sitting with. And probably not the best thing to say to Revekah either.

Elandrin, Nesterin thought, was the kind of  remarkable bone head that thought good looks and charm could be a substitute for honest care and attentiveness.

“Try some of this,” Elandrin went on.

“It better not be more frigging jelly and ant babies...”

“The roots are for the Lady Herald. But elfroot leaves can be pretty pleasant to smoke.”

“Don’t let her hear. She’s trying to get _sober_ ,” Sera hissed protectively.

“It’s a mild relaxant and not at all addictive. I also wasn’t offering any to her. So _Shhh…._ ”

“Well... it’s still not fair. Is it? I mean, isn’t it?”

“It’s complicated,” Elandrin agreed. Nesterin could hear him lighting and taking a puff of something nonetheless. “I was with a clan once, just outside of Ferelden, that would have called what I’m doing now totally sacrilegious. They say Elfroot is for burning on the hearth for Sylaise and nothing else. Another clan I was with used to sit about every afternoon with this stuff. They….tended not to travel as far as most clans.”

Weakly, Nesterin chuckled. Her heart, she felt, was racing- uncomfortably fast, and uncomfortably forcefully, like a rabbit trying to kick its way out of a trap. Breathing out deeply, she pulled herself up and shuffled over so that she could lean her head on the boards of the cart and listen, drawing her knees into her chest and wrapping the blanket around her.

 _Bad habit, snooping and sneaking and staying outside of things,_ she thought.

“Right? So. Elfy Andrew or whatever your name is, I need you to know how completely totally not bothered and bored I am of Dalish stuff,” Sera huffed frustratedly. “It’s been _one_ day.”

“I might be interested,” Briala confessed. “Did you never dream about running away to the Dalish when you were a little girl? I used to think they were like fairy tales…”  

“When I was little I dreamed about apples. And eating apples. And how to get at apples. Then I woke up and worked out how to do it,” said Sera. “But you’re not wrong about Dalish and fairy stories. Because they aren’t real, are they?”

“No, I learned that pretty soon after too.”

“I didn’t know the Lady Herald and myself were imaginary,” said Elandrin.

“Well...the people are real. But the shit they come out with and everything they pretend to stand for, isn’t real is it?” Sera accused. “Like your face wotsits. She told you about those yet? About why hers’ are all gone?”

“I have come to find out about them, yes,” said Elandrin pleasantly. “Kind of fascinating how meanings get lost and definitions are rewritten.”

“What’s this?” Briala prompted.

“They were slave markings at the time of Arlathan.”

“But my hahren, Felassan...he was marked. Does that mean he was a slave?” Briala winced. “ _Still_? Why didn’t the Dread Wolf free him or allow him to keep his face bare?”

Revekah giggled in her horrible high pitched laugh from somewhere further away. She really wanted to get stabbed apparently.

"Please, if you have something to say, say it," snarled Briala. 

More mumbling, more profanity. And Nesterin felt her own intense stab of sympathy for Briala. Injustice piled up on top of injustice for Briala’s broken friend.

“Everyone’s a slave to something or somebody,” said Elandrin and she could hear his shrug and the sucking in of his elf root.

“Poor Nesterin. I remember her’s. More than half her whole face was covered in it…” Briala went on.

“Like someone tried to do a doodle on her face and just got mad at it,” Sera agreed.

“It’s not a pleasant thing to put on someone who didn’t have a choice in the matter,” Briala finished firmly.

“I wouldn’t think about it too hard,” advised Elandrin.

It was very sound advice. Nesterin had tried very hard not to think about it too,but she couldn’t stop her mind from drifting to it.

What must she have looked like to him? So thoroughly marked for vengeance and brutality. Did he think she was playing at being a soldier? A stupid girl spat out of the woods who could scratch and bite and cast fires and wards but couldn’t even hold a sword.

Or was it more sinister? Would she have appeared as a battered, brutalized tribute of The _All Father?_ Who sprinkled his _seed_ in slave girls to get the flowers growing. _.._ With a mark like that she might as well have been gagged and hogtied before him.

Another wave of nausea rose up inside of her. And she thought, sadly, of the Vir Tanadahl and the Vir Atish'an.  _We are the Dalish: keepers of the lost lore, walkers of the lonely path. We are the last of the....the last of the....chattel._

 _Mythal was the best of them,_  said Amaril. _I was lucky. He was lucky. We had marbles and figs and places to mark our growing heights,_ Amaril agreed. _But all of it went wrong..._

“So why haven’t you taken yours’ off?” asked Sera.

“I wouldn’t know how. It’s not an everyday kind of magic. Plus...that sort of makes me marked for Fen’Harel if you really think about it. I’ll take my Mythal markings any day, please and thank you.”

“But you don’t think it’s stupid?”

“Well of course it’s stupid,” laughed Elandrin, taking another toke. “I think trying to hold on to our history is like fashioning a rope out of ashes. In truth, I think all history is ashes. And one day we will also all be ashes. So I love looking at stupid symbols and  stupid stories and wrong history, because...well...otherwise you just think about being ashes.”

Nesterin shivered. In truth, she spent most of the time trying not to listen to Elandrin, simply because she found his overall demeanour so off-putting. Listening to his words was just as unsettling, the combination of an incredibly cheerful voice speaking some terribly dark things didn't help with her stomach. 

“But your lot ended up squatting out in the woods for nothing. For demons and ruins and slave marks and one baldly old elf blowing everything away.”

“Instead of assimilating, you mean? Having human words and chantry songs forced down my throat?”

“No,” Briala interjected sharply. “No I didn’t _assimilate_ to anything because I didn’t run off and join the Dalish. The only thing I learned amongst the Dalish is that they hate city elves and that they do desperate things, like fighting, stealing, abandoning their children in the woods to die and summoning demons to hang onto the past. I am not ashamed that I stayed and did my best for my people’s future. ”

“I’m sorry if I have already made for such a poor representation of the Dalish to you. I’m sure the Lady Herald would apologize too, if she was here. For all of the demon summoning and all of those babies she’s been leaving out in the woods...”

“Of course I don’t mean her. Or you.”

“Then who can you possibly mean?”

“Other Dalish….”

“ _Other_ Dalish. _Heh,”_ shrugged Elandrin. “I was born amongst these _Other_ Dalish. And we did fight and we did steal. But only ever from monsters without faces. They weren’t people. _We_ were The People...everything else was just _Other_ too.”

“Which is why it was a good thing you left and saw the world.”

“Because no one’s ever said to you, either of you- you’re not like “other elves”? No one’s ever told you you’re not sneaky or stupid or cowardly or slovenly or untrustworthy.”

“I played the game, I was a spymaster. I learned to play to my advantage and watch and listen. Those insults people spat at me? Those were my livelihood. I took them and I lived in them and I made them work for me. Which is why you now call me _My Lady_ instead of Briala the handmaiden.”

“Impressive. But short lived, no? Where are your lands at this moment, I wonder?”

Sera snorted slightly at that.

“Red Jenny had friends leave. Get enough coin to get a house and a cook. And before they knew it _they_ were the ones being asked about.”

“Sera’s right," Elandrin continued. "Either you’re the exception that proves the rule or you’re the rule that proves the rule, and usually the former degenerates into the latter. Either way we’re never going to be people. We’re all just symbols and signs. And it’s never going to change.”

A heavy silence descended on the people outside, Nesterin could almost feel it. Even so, it was getting hard to hear anything and she could feel the well of sorrows descending on her like a wave again. She grabbed the bucket and let it rest between her knees.

“I miss my Laisa,” Elandrin sighed. “She would never have tolerated all of this...monologuing.”

At the sound of her sister’s name, Nesterin threw up again. It felt like a monumental effort doing it, hurting her throat and leaving her stomach burning. Outside, they all heard it. Judging from the way that they all stopped talking, and the rustling. She wished that she could have been more tired. Then she wouldn’t have felt so ashamed.

After a moment though, Briala picked up the thread.

“Sounds like you think you should have gone with her….”

“Oh I absolutely don’t think that,” Elandrin said firmly. “I love stories but I stay out of them for the most part. I wouldn’t be anywhere near here if she hadn’t left.  And, you know, Fen Harel’s plan is totally pointless.”

“I’ve heard it described as many things. Insidious, genocidal, an act of evil. Pointless has never been one of them.”

Nesterin couldn’t have been imagining it, but she was sure she made out an icy element to Briala’s tone. They’d both danced the same dance when it came to secret Elvhen friends before. Maybe it was merely more wishful thinking on her part but she was certain Briala was growing suspicious.

“Well _I_ say it’s pointless. Because…” he trailed off, sighing. “Never mind.”

 _Ask him more._ Nesterin mentally begged Briala.

“No. Enlighten me, please?”

Another pause. Another toke and then, pleasantly enough, he said:

“Well..it goes like this: bright shiny world? Decaying old one? Blaze of fire and blood or slow decline and whimper? The ends are always the same. Elf, human, spirit, kossith, dwarf? The same. There is no world that has ever existed or ever will exist that won’t eventually turn rotten. Elgar din’an.”

 _The spirit dies,_ the voices translated for her.

"Cheery!" said Sera.

"I've got a bitch of a curse on me. It makes you tend towards resignation. We should all of us- gods and kings and poor men alike-be filling up our days with stupid stories that turn out to be wrong and waiting out our deaths buried _deep_ inside of pretty girls that we love," said Elandrin, somehow managing to both sound like The Iron Bull who Nesterin adored  and also like someone she desperately wanted to punch in the testicles. 

"I'd drink to that, but we had to throw all the drink away," said Sera. There went Nesterin's last hope of the beer. 

“Speaking of which I’m going to check on the Lady Herald,” Elandrin announced.

“I’ll do it,” Briala said, immediately. Nesterin’s kindred mistrustful spirit.

“You can heal rotten innards can you?” he shot back at her grimly.

When he pulled back the cheaply woven curtain, Nesterin tensed up, and flattened herself near a corner. Elandrin came in, stinking of smoke and freshly burned elfroot. She watched him move, small and so handsomely featured, smiling in a way that she could only see as sinister.

Her Laisa _was_ lovable. She was pretty and willowy, she was sharp, and she was unafraid to speak her mind and live by her words. When she saw injustice or a problem, she had the courage to set about doing what she could to fix it- even if it had led her to the first steps on the path Nesterin feared the most. So she didn’t doubt that Elandrin _could_ love her.

As for the rest?

She couldn’t trust any of it.

What was it that Solas had told her once? That a spirit came to you in the fade in exactly  the manner that you expected it.

And all she saw these days were monsters and demons.

“How’s the patient? Do you need any water? Or company? Or a walk?”

She thought about hitting him with a blast of dispelling magic, like Solas had done to the pretty girl in Amaril’s memory. Hit him with it and hope he would change his shape. Hope that amongst the mysteries of the fade and the mana inside of her there was magic enough to somehow split open the elusive truths that hid in men’s minds and their hearts.

“Blood,” said Elandrin, catching sight of the bucket and he frowned. “I’m worried you’re going to get worse before you get better.”

If she hit him with the spell, if she sent him fleeing or fought him until he was bloody, she’d never get help. Laisa might get hurt, her body might give out.

She needed him.

Nesterin wanted to clench her teeth at the narrowness of the box that she was walled into and at how powerless she felt.

Her mind and her dreams were now turned over to Mythal and her will. Her body was now turned over to Elandrin. Whilst her heart, naturally, remained so far away

To what end still remained a swirling mystery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a breather this one. Just some elves getting high in the woods. But I figured everyone needed like one hot minute to rest :)


	38. A Dream of Amaril (5)

Flowers scatter petals. Trees shed their leaves. The wind whips up dandelion fluff and litters seeds across the land. After the soldiers have gone, trails of refugees come to the door to beg for sanctuary.

_ Cicadas, screech owls in mating season. My teeth chattering. Mice on the lichen. Weevils in the birch leaves...wide awake. Headache, stomach ache, ache in my missing bones and in my heart. Wolves and whispers from the well… _

The poor Housekeeper.

In every memory I have of her she is either frazzled by her responsibilities or she is a rotting corpse, her face stiff and purple, black blood in her long hair,  one hand outstretched. Now, she stands on the steps of the summerhouse with her hands folded and shakes her head. 

“I’m sorry,” she says to the collected. There are about forty of them, draped in long cowls and cloaks, more like ragged shadows than people. 

“Truly, I am. If you have any children, I can pass them into Mythal’s protection. But I cannot do any more for you than that.”

“We will work,” says a desperate voice from underneath a brown hood. “We can work. We  _ want  _ to work. All we need in return is food and shelter.” 

“Just the children,” says the Housekeeper miserably. “I can only take the children.” 

The cluster of shadows parts and I hear a sob. A woman holds something pink and new in her arms. It’s the littlest thing I’ve seen in decades. She curls her arms around the child and shakes her head. When somebody tries to take it from her, she curses and shouts, swiping at the air with her hand, calling mana into her body. The smell of rain hangs in the air like a threat and they stop trying to take the child from her. 

Behind the Housekeeper, Charity bows low and seems to tremble. A small, plaintive song begins to irradiate from it’s loosely defined shape. 

_ The pulse of mana, a tug from the fade, a thousand threads in the well. A broken liver, a broken head, a broken heart. Drowning in a well, drowning in a bottle, drowning in sweat. I can hear the bats near the cart, furiously fluttering, slapping the skin of their wings.  _

Three children come to join our number. Two are little and one, a girl, is nearly grown. Her name is Athim and she is practically feral. She snarls and spits and swears. She hoards food underneath her bed and makes the whole dormitory stink. We try to bribe her to take baths, but she refuses to, point blank. 

When I ask her about the world outside the temple, she sneers at me. She asks me what I would ever want with  _ out there _ and calls me a little fool. 

The other two, a pair of dirty urchins, are a little better. But not much. 

They are not like us. We leave them to the spirits. They get the wisps to talk to and poor Charity seems to like them well enough. It is good for it to have something to do. More refugees have arrived, they have started to camp on the lawn, and Charity has become...I suppose the only word to describe it is  _ ill _ . 

The smell of it is like overripe fruit. It seems to wither around itself. And it sings, always, a low and soft and desperately sad melody. 

“Leave me alone,” I snap at it, one afternoon when I am working in the garden. I have assigned myself a special project to pass my days, constructing a grotto out of limestone and broken tiles. 

Charity’s song is irritatingly pitiful and I shake my hands in the spirit’s general direction, feeling the curl of a strange, insidious urge to hit it or call it a nasty name. 

“You must let Charity be,” says Valour sternly from behind me as the singing spirit drifts away into the house. “Its purpose is to help. It is suffering because we cannot provide the refugees with aid.” 

“I don’t like them,” I sniff. A group of them tried to scale the walls of the summerhouse and steal into the kitchen. One night later, a guard dressed in gold was stationed outside of the door. I don’t really understand why they are so desperate to get  _ in _ . It would be much better, I think, to find a way to get  _ out _ .

“Hungry people are not an enemy,” Valour tells me. “There is nothing heroic in waging war upon people who have less than you do.” 

“I don’t want to wage a war against them,” I snap, I pick up one of the stones I have collected at my feet and push at the air around it, imagining the atoms inside of it vibrating until it shatters. “I just want to get on and for them to go.” 

I pull crystals out of the salt in the rock, so that it shimmers pink and find a place for it at the base of my structure. Valour looks at what I am doing, and though it has no face apart from the armour, I feel a little vibration of curiosity.

“I’m practising. I break the rock, fashion the stone and then I put the pieces together,” I explain. “It’s going to be a grotto when I’m finished. Somewhere people can sit.”

“I can see the shape it will take already,” says Valour, nodding. I smile proudly and it goes on,  “It’s going to be beautiful. Is it a tribute to Mythal?”

I frown, “No. It’s  _ my  _ project.”

In several hundred years, the act of creating a tribute to myself in the house of Mythal will be considered sacrilegious. In this time, it is simply the act of a young girl learning how to build things. 

Valour stays beside me and watches me work for a little while. I imagine that my building gets a little bolder; I follow my gut instead of my head when it comes to the placement of the broken stones, I warp the rock in ways that I have never tried before. And it would be pleasant enough, if not for Charity’s low moaning starting to drift on the wind. 

_ The mark on my hand is killing me...it burns and bleeds and I can’t see straight. No. No, it’s gone. They took it. Chug down elfroot and lyrium and spindleweed and burning alcohol. Bite on a rag. It came away like picking meat from a boiled rabbit. Dead, burned, bloody  arm curling up on the stone floor. It should have spread. Blackened my shoulder and my face and my lungs.  _

Looking over at Valour I notice that, it too, has changed. Something about its armour, I think, has lost a little of its sheen. The change is not nearly as drastic as Charity’s. But it  _ has _ started to change. 

“Your friends are all gone,” I tell it. 

I am sure that it is not news. Time moves slowly in the summerhouse, but I am sure that it has been a little while since the soldiers occupied the lawn. 

The young wolf went before they did, even. But I have kept his secret. In all honesty, I am not sure who I would tell. The Housekeeper would scold me for snooping, and probably warn me to say nothing- given that she let him in the house and hid him on the first night. My dormitory mates would think I was telling stories and tall tales. Valour loves him and Charity loves him too. I am not sure  _ what _ I would tell either…

A wolf and a big cat in the bathhouse. And the big cat says something that seems to frighten the wolf...I have honestly no idea what it means. 

“My friends?” asks Valour. “Oh yes. Our armies fought with exceptional honour and they will now be blessed with other duties.”

“But you stayed?”

“I will guard Mythal’s children. Like you. This is a good and valiant duty, is it not?” There is a desperate element to the end of Valour’s speech. It seems to beg me to say  _ yes, yes it is a very fine duty indeed.  _ But instead I turn bitterly to my rocks and I say:

“I am  _ not  _ Mythal’s child.”

“You have lived in her house. Eaten her food. Learned from teachers she provided for you.” 

“But I’ve never even  _ seen _ her. Not once in my whole life.”

“Your life has been very short, Amaril,” chuckles Valour. “Very short and filled up with a war. Mothers must guard their children, and sometimes that means leaving them. But she used to stand here, almost exactly where you do, amongst the garden. She’ll return when there is peace.”

I had a mother and she died. I am probably thinking of her in this memory though, of course, I have forgotten almost everything about her now. 

There was a song, perhaps? Or am I thinking of Charity? 

There was a way she smiled? Her lips turned down most of the time, but when she smiled it was like the sunshine….sunshine and songs about suffering, and her skin still smelled of perfumes from the bazaar at  Llomerryn. 

_ That was my mother, Amaril. My mother smelled of Llomerryn and smiled like sunshine.  _ _ Bump, bump over stones and all the time she moves. Moves like alive things. Mae’s face. Mae’s hair. Trapped too tight. Perhaps if I peeked she would smile at me again...oh, Cole, my lovely Cole. You tried to dredge up the feelings we drowned in wine and trapped behind a veil. We must have been such hard work. _

“But the war is supposed to be over,” I point out to Valour. “The ground stopped shaking. The sky went blue again.” 

“Yes. But war’s ending does not always mean peace. A war always makes great holes. Mythal is trying to make sure that more bad things do not fill them.” 

“What kind of bad things?” I ask sharply.

I think of worst things I know. First the flood which came and ruined my village and condemned me to a life inside of the summerhouse. I think of the rattling earth and the days of darkness. I think of Athim- nasty piece of work that she is, hoarding food and calling me a fool. I think of blood and a soldier vomiting stones and a large yellow cat in the bathhouse. 

I daresay I lived a charmed life in the summerhouse. It is much easier to think of terrible things now. 

“You don’t need to worry,” says Valour. “The very bravest and cleverest of all my friends are helping her.” 

Solas spits up blood and stones in my memory and it doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. 

_ Solas tells me stories in my memory. Paints, and swears me to secrecy about poetry. Scolds me about being reckless with myself, kisses me and presses his hand to my wrist to heal me. He picks lizards out of his bedroll and sets his own coattails on fire. And he’s already done so much more than I could have ever even conceived of him being capable of. _

“But wouldn’t that be a more valiant thing for you to do too?” I ask Valour. 

I am sure that I catch Valour’s armour shifting and growing dull. The great expanse of its chest plate even seems to blossom with rust in a few places. But it draws its legs in together as if falling into formation and stands to full attention.

“I will guard Mythal’s children,” it repeats sharply. “This is the best realisation of my purpose.” 

I have forgotten what happened to Valour and Charity before they came and slaughtered all of Mythal’s people. Or perhaps I never came to know. But I can say for certain that, in the final days of my people, there was no Charity or Valour to be found.  


	39. He wants to leave/ He wants to stay

_After the flowers bloom, we become a people of industry. It takes thousands upon thousands to draw the raw essence from the fade. We create worlds within worlds, of sharp blue towers and crimson forests. With dazzling magic and swirling lights, we enact the visions of our leaders._

_The plaintive cry of the last of the birds haunts me in the temple still. Their songs were like feelings. Pulling out sorrow and joy from the flowers and the leaves and out from the very fade itself._

_A hundred years is a good enough place to begin the searching. Others build outwards, into the air and we begin to build within ourselves. To explore the secrets of the dreaming. We share knowledge amongst ourselves and amongst our spirit friends. And we will be the first to die…_

“Cooey. Shovel face! Oi,” Sera snapped her fingers and waved a hand in front of Nesterin’s face, hauling her from memories of the Well of Sorrows.

It took Nesterin a moment to even register where she was. Her hand felt out for bracken, for the russet coloured moss that looked like bruises on the heath and the fine white tufts of cottongrass. There was a campfire, spitting up weak orange fronds. There was dry, seared grouse that Sera and Elandrin had culled from the living population of fat birds with red feathers flying low and fast above the stretching moorland.

Soon there would be walking. Just like her clan’s journey to Serault, they took the paths close by, but not directly upon the Imperial Highway. They were but a few days from Cumberland, and after that they would be at the mouth of the Planasene Forests. Then they would reach the foothills of the Vimmark Mountains.

“You didn’t hear a single word of that, did you?” Sera accused.

All four of the others were looking at her. Even Revekah- though her expression was a twisted smile compared to the concern on the faces of the other’s.

“Huh? Oh...umm…”

“Not a one.”

“Sorry, Sera,” Nesterin sighed, rubbing her temple. “It’s the voices. They’re getting _sharp_.”

 _I would have liked to have seen these worlds within worlds…._ sighed Amaril. _The temple changed over the years and in time, we reconstructed much of it. But, oh, it must have paled in comparison to places like Arlathan._

“Voices?” asked Briala.

“Lady Lump-Brain has a well in her head. All full up of dead people and oldy elfy rubbish. Well of _Sorrows_ it said.  And she said, sure, sounds like a party to me!” Sera shook her head and said, again not _not_ fondly. “Why can’t you stop drinking sad things?”

“It’s my favorite taste. It's not a metaphor,” Nesterin added to Briala. “I do have a well of ancient knowledge in my head. It takes some concentrating not to listen to them all the time. I used to be better at it. Then I thought I was really good at it. But,” she said grimly. “I suppose by then I was just drunk all the time.”

Drunk when she asked Deshanna to be her first again. Drunk when she revealed the truth of the vallaslin. Drunk every time she met with Vivienne. Drunk around her sisters, constantly. Drunk in the White Spire, drunk in the University and drunk with the Emperor. She had been good at hiding it for the most part, she supposed, but had also failed and stumbled spectacularly on so many occasions.

How could she have been so irresponsible? How could she have passed up her entire world and everyone she ever cared about in favour of little more than snatches from a bottle, a swimming sensation, and too predictably, going too far and falling into the ocean?

She hardly even recognized herself in it. She used to strive so hard be focused and brave and compassionate and wise. Deshanna had taught her better. The Inquisition had taught her better. And the people she loved _deserved_ better.

So why did she still feel like she’d cut off her one remaining arm for even the cheapest bottle of bathtub brewed booze?

“It’s about time we talked seriously about what we need,” she announced to the assembled. She massaged her scalp slightly, though it did little good. “We need to consider what we have to work with and what we are going to do with it.”

She could feel Amaril’s memories pulsating behind her brain. She could hear the whispers getting louder and she pushed and she pushed and she pushed down upon them. Elandrin and Sera and Briala sat back to listen. Revekah eyed her carefully.

It was a look that made her remember that they still had an agent amongst them.

“The fact of the matter is, we don’t know enough to attack and we don’t know enough to slip in unnoticed. I say we do it like my Keeper would have done when my clan traded with humans. Cautious, wary, but with an eye always towards diplomacy. _No Sera-”_ she added sharply when she saw her friend try to argue. “We have to do it like this. Diplomacy is all I have left. Solas was civilised, he appreciated that problems are just as likely to be solved with talking as with violence. Solas’ agents _will_ be civilised.”

Revekah, who was eating her breakfast, crunched grouse bones loudly between her teeth and spat them wetly onto the ground.

“He _murdered_ my friend in the fade,” said Briala hotly. “That’s not what I would call civilised.”

Nesterin fought not to point out that this was pretty rich coming from an Orlesian who had risen so far in the Grand Game.

“We won’t leave without Felassan,” she assured her instead. “He’ll be an important part in the negotiation. But we cannot talk of anything else until they are safe. If we were playing chess, we’d be expected to sacrifice those pieces before we could ever consider moving forwards. But I don’t play chess with people’s lives.”

“You promised me a chance for revenge,” said Briala heavily. Nesterin indicated her head towards Revekah. Revekah who was watching and listening. She hoped she would be understood.

_You’re still lying to her, though._

Now she could walk without descending into a trembling mass of sweat and tears, Nesterin had allowed herself a little more time to think about Revekah. And the more she thought, the more she realised that there were several things she did not like:

The first was that she still hadn’t tried to run away. The second was that she was sleeping again. The third was that she was leading them to the Vimmarks without consequence. The fourth was that she was keeping silent now, forever watching and listening.

A memory of Mythal’s summerhouse drifted to her that afternoon. Just a little snippet of Amaril’s adolescence. A teacher came and showed them how to spin something like glass from raw fade. They made delicate tulips out of the glasswork and Amaril tried to make animals. She could feel raw fade essence like a caress, moving through her and around her- not tugging desperately as it did during Nesterin’s own spellwork. Just gentle and present.

The veil was almost suffocating when she forced herself to focus once again upon the road to the Free Marches. Her limbs felt heavy and ugly and strange.

 _I never did what the teachers told me_ , Amaril reflected with glee. _I had my own things I wanted to build._

Nesterin sought out Revekah and told the others she wanted to walk with her for a while. Taking the chain from out of Elandrin’s hand, she gave it to Revekah to carry herself. And the redhead looked at her suspiciously.

“What I said about not playing chess?” Nesterin told her. “That goes for you too. Yes, you’re my bargaining tool, but I still want to make sure we’re treating you properly. Is there anything you would like?”

Revekah made a rude hand gesture and said, “Suck a dick,” in elvish.

One of Mythal’s servants thought it was quite appropriate to whisper the details of a glyph, traced over the skin, that shaped soft, wet sensations around a given spot, rendering the fade into a slick, sly tongue. _Useful for lonely nights,_ it told her.

Nesterin let out a bark of laughter and clapped her hand to her mouth. At the laugh, Revekah flinched. Nesterin thought she saw something slip in the facade of her.

Was she frightened? Of them? Was she frightened of what would happen in the mountains? 

 _You and your bloody bleeding heart_ , sighed Amaril. _You should be more concerned that she’s plotting something._

“Do you need me to make you more potions? Are you worried about what might happen to you if you fall asleep?” Nesterin asked her.

“Make yourself a potion. One that stops someone being a puking, stinking, pathetic drunk.”

It caused a sharp stab in her spine and a lurch in her chest, but Nesterin bounced back from it quickly.

“They have that. It’s called wine,” she said and she summoned up a grim smile.

How easily her tongue could recall the sharp tannins in an aged red. And the leather, and the bark. Like wandering, idle, but not lost in a forest.

“It’s a whole cycle of wanting and drinking and hating yourself and wanting and drinking,” Nesterin went on. “I was trapped. I still am. Do you understand at all what I’m talking about?”

“I don’t care about you or your problems,” said Revekah primly, wiping her nose on her arm, and looking out across the moorland.

“Someone should have looked after your arm,” Nesterin said and she pointed to the charred flesh. “How long has it been like that?”

Revekah folded her loose chantry prison robes around her arm, hiding it away.

“Listen,” Nesterin sighed. “You’re a person. I’m a person. We’re travelling together. I’m going to have to talk to you and you’re going to have to talk to us. You’re going to get to know me. I’m going to get to know you. We’re going to find all sorts of common ground...it’s inevitable.”

Honestly, it might have been a threat Varric had once made to a reticent, frightened Dalish girl in the early days of the Inquisition.

“When you said you were going to put your hand into my face and rip out my throat, I almost liked you for one second,” sneered Revekah. “But then you _talk_ on and on and on and you ruin it.”

Nesterin would consider that a good enough start.

* * *

“Go back in the cart,” Elandrin demanded. “Your pulse is insane.”

He pulled her out of another memory of Amaril shifting through her box of secrets.

As she grew, she added more things to the collection. One of the servants stole handfuls of sunflower seeds to nibble on and Amaril scooped up the ones that they dropped. She collected the sketches that another had drawn of the birds, but discarded because he didn’t think they were any good. She found a broken tassel in an alcove, most likely the remnants of some heated and illicit sexual encounter and put that into her box too.

Nesterin forced herself to listen to the water racing inside of the stream they walked alongside and to feel the sun on her back. She focused upon Elandrin’s two fingers, pressed the pulse points of her wrist. But she also forced herself _not_ to focus on the acing of her heart and the sweat on her forehead and the desperate tugging in her stomach and upon her lips for the taste of alcohol.

It was a difficult feat of acrobatics, this- thought Nesterin- being present enough not to get lost in the Well of Sorrows, but not so present that all she thought about was a different kind of drowning.

“That cart is starting to feel like my coffin,” snapped Nesterin, irritably. “I want to walk.”

“Here,” sighed Elandrin. “Since there’s no point in me even bothering to tell you otherwise.”

He touched her chest and a familiar flare of healing magic fanned out from it. It was difficult to find much comfort in it, since the sensation had started to leave her feeling anxious and confused. Trying to sound light and conversational, however, she asked Elandrin:

“Where did you learn to heal?”

“Oh, all over. Keeper Glennis taught me for the most part. But I’ve travelled from The Anderfells to Rivain and back again and picked up more than a trick or two.”

He winked at her. She focused very hard on _not_ hating him.

“It’s spirit magic isn’t it?” she asked crisply, like she didn’t know with complete certainty that it was. “Not necessarily a Dalish speciality.”

“Only spirit is a bad spirit. I am very familiar with the mentality of our people,” agreed Elandrin, repeating an old Dalish adage and grinning his winning smile.

He looked tired though. So very tired. There were dark circles forming under his yellow eyes, and his long black hair seemed to have lost much of its sheen.

“But you don’t believe it.”

“You are literally carrying a sword with a spirit encased within it right now,” said Elandrin, pointing at the hilt resting at Nesterin’s right hip. “And for what it’s worth, I _do_ think spirits are dangerous. I think they are too easy to corrupt. We corrupt them and in return they corrupt us. The whole thing is a mess if you’re not careful.”

“But you still learned spirit magic?”

“When I was hunting with Sera, she told me she didn’t like to hunt for small things overmuch,” Elandrin began. Another damnable non-sequitur. “She sulked and asked me why we couldn’t eat a bear for breakfast.”

“This is an Orlesian moor,” Nesterin pointed out, half sighing over how little their city-elf friends knew of the wilderness. “What kind of addled half-starved bear would stumble here from the Planasenes or the mountains? Also, I’d never let any of us-”

“-Eat a bear,” said Elandrin nodding primly. “Of course you wouldn’t. You were a First, and so Deshanna almost certainly told you the story of Dirthamen’s bears.”  

“Naturally. Andruil’s hunters were growing lazy. She implored them to kill a great beast of the forest, but they were told they could outwit her- the Dread Wolf’s always got to be involved in there somewhere- if they simply killed three bears and stitched their hides all together. So that night the hunters drank and feasted on the meat of the bears instead of hunting the great beast, but they were caught in the act. So Andruil asked Dirthamen to poison the meat of the bears in their stomachs, since they were the creatures he favoured the most. And bear meat has been poison to the elves ever since.”

“Did you ever wonder about the genesis of that one?”

“Something awful, I expect,” Nesterin grimaced. “I mean the bears were probably slaves and something dreadful to do with power and sacrifice was happening.”

Rather than leave Elandrin to guess at it, she asked the Well of Sorrows. They whispered but gave no answer.

 _Beats me_ , Amaril confessed.

“No, it’s nothing to do with Arlathan. It was just a bit of practical advice for getting by in a forest that became a story. Bears are fearsome tricky things to kill and they also eat shit and get worms. If the meat isn’t properly handled, and you aren’t blessed with a sturdy shemlen constitution, seven times out of ten a bear for breakfast means the runs until dinner. That’s a lot of factors to go wrong for diminishing returns, so you shouldn’t bother unless you are completely certain you can do everything right. Or you’re completely desperate.”

“The spirits are bears in this scenario, I take it?”

“Precisely.”

“And does that make you certain or desperate, Elandrin?”

“Bit of both?” Elandrin grinned. Then he dropped his smile and his voice by a few octaves, “Speaking of? When are we going to talk about that thing Revekah said? About the thing deep below?”

“I’m not putting Laisa’s _life_ ahead of whatever Solas may or may not be doing in the mountains.”

“But you’ve been thinking about it.”

“I’ve been throwing up my guts in a cart,” she pointed out. And then she sighed. “Yes, I’ve been thinking about it. The Free Marches are clan Lavellan’s home. We wandered, like every Dalish has to, but we always came back to the lands we knew the best. Grey Warden outposts pop up all over the mountains like weeds because those mountains are thick with darkspawn. Sniffing out archdemons and all sorts. It was where they trapped Corypheus, any money there’s a Titan involved there too. Not necessarily good influences on my sister.”

“So you should probably stop Fen’Harel getting too far into that mountain, right? Stop him finding whatever he wants down there….”

Nesterin sighed. “No.”

“No?”

“Laisa and Felassan first. I meant what I said at breakfast.”

“Revekah might yet know. Or we could go to the Grey Wardens, if any remain in the area. They must be keeping an eye on the activity, or have a record of the history of the Vimmarks.”

“Oh I’ll just pop into Kirkwall too shall I? It’s on the way. See my old friend Varric and get Mirwen and Bel settled in since we seem to have _all the time in the world_ ,” she snapped.

Nesterin massaged her skull again. Creators, she’d find a bar in Kirkwall and go _swimming_ in it if she had half a chance.

“Did you just show up places when you were in the Inquisition? Or did you have scouts and spies gathering information to pass onto you?”

Nesterin sighed, unable argue against him. But she confessed:

“My situation with the Grey Wardens is complicated.”

“Are you in any situations that _aren’t_ complicated?”

“Fine. When we get to the mountains, I’ll connect with the Grey Wardens. For _information._ Not force. This is still a simple negotiation.”

“Perfect. You’re _reasonable_ sober,” he teased.

“Don’t push your luck,” she said. But she smiled despite herself.

* * *

 

 _A shabby man in a bright garden. He turns to a woman and he says ‘_ **_goodbye’_ ** _, and it’s soft and it’s so sad. Is this a dream of Amaril or of Nesterin? The garden is bright, the fade washes over skin like a whisper and seems to belong to old things. But the heartbreak, the tensing of his shoulders and the turning away- surely that belongs to now? Are their memories finally bleeding together into one?_

“Nesterin,” she heard, coming out of the swirl of the Well of Sorrows. Again, “Nesterin,” in a soft insistent whisper, pulling her away from her dreams.

Nesterin forced herself to focus on the cart. On darkness and the call of screech owls. On Briala’s freckles as she sat over her, tugging on her shoulder.

“There’s something you need to see,” said Briala gravely.

Nesterin had her spirit blade in her hand before Briala had even finished speaking. Briala put her fingers to her lips and crawled across the cart, past the sprawling shape of the sleeping Sera and past the hunched and chained Revekah, whose eyes glistened like a cat’s in the darkness.

Briala pulled back the woven cloth of the cart to reveal grass tinged blue with the moonlight. The big sky was unsettling, and the stars spread out overhead in a scattered mess that desperately wanted drawing together. And underneath it, Elandrin was pacing around the campsite, muttering to himself, his pack in one hand and his staff in the other.

“I wasn’t going to say anything, after the first time,” Briala explained. “Figured you had other things to worry about. But he’s been doing this _every single night_. For hours and hours and hours.”

Suddenly, Elandrin let out a cry of frustration and drop kicked his bag across the campsite. Supplies flew out of it and scattered on the ground. A moment passed, and he ran for his bag, dropping to his knees to scoop up his things and pack them away once more.

“He packs his things. Then he throws them out. Then he packs them up again,” whispered Briala, and they watched him go through the cycle again.

“He wants to leave,” Nesterin said heavily, as he grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder.

“He wants to stay,” said Briala, when he dropped his bag to the ground. “Is he even awake? Is it a sleep walking, fade-thing?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s very creepy. As if he’s trapped on a loop.”

Nesterin’s tolerance for secrets was not what it once was. She had not wanted to rock the boat when she needed Elandrin’s help to get through the nightmare of weaning herself from the bottle, but she was getting better- minutely, by degrees- and it seemed as if he was a hair’s breadth from leaving anyway.

Pulling herself up, she strode towards Elandrin, who was still muttering and didn’t even seem to notice her.

Breathing in, she channelled all of her energy into casting.

A gust of magic erupted from inside of her, flattening the grass and blowing the loose flakes of ash from the campfire into a swirling grey storm. The dispelling wind slid around the campsite, pushing upon whatever stray traces of magic it could find. Where the fire had been lit, where Briala had been practising barriers, where Nesterin had needed to be healed.But the bulk of it shot straight towards Elandrin.

It hit him from the side with the force of a gut punch. He staggered sideways, shocked out of his reverie. For a moment, nothing happened. He simply stared at her, an expression of betrayal crossing over his handsome features.

And then, almost mercifully, he shuddered. He blinked, and when his eyes opened, raw magic ignited his eyes. He was filled to the brim with it. Each of his veins stood out with traces of glowing light. The moonlit blue glow of the campsite switched to a jaundiced yellow, erupting from out of Elandrin.

And that’s when he lunged at her.


	40. Elgar din’an

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for some bad language from a trash-bag spirit.

As soon as Elandrin went for her, Nesterin fade-stepped out of his range. Air and raw fade rushed around her ears, whipping up her hair and she lurched into a spot, twenty paces to the side of him, Spirit Blade drawn.

Apparently, however, this was the exact move he had anticipated, as he did not stop running, taking off towards the woods and trying to flee rather than face her.

“Shit,” she muttered.

She still wasn’t _well_. Fade-stepping brought up her heart rate at the best of times, and it thundered in her chest now, making the mana tremble through her body like thousands of burrowing ants.

She ignored the feeling and took off after him on foot, casting ahead, bringing up a wall of force to cut him off. Elandrin, still frothing with demon magic had to pause, but he dispelled her barrier as easily as pulling up a fistful of grass, shooting a barrage of energy behind him with little precision or care.

Dodging the bulk of it still left her open to a stray blast, slicing across her amputated limb. She hadn’t gotten enough practise keeping it in, and muscle memory had her trying to make a fist with a hand that no longer lived to channel magic. Nesterin hissed sharply and a weak barrier erupted around her a second or so too late.

It smelled of fresh linen, soap and sharp citruses. She could feel cool air flowing in from little gaps in it, but it was a proficient enough barrier nonetheless.

“Not bad,” she informed Briala. “I want him alive,” she added.

Briala adjusted her aim slightly, and flung a dagger through the air.

The shot was as precise as it was ruthless, hitting Elandrin in the tendons of his calf . He screamed in agony, his fleshly voice commingling with something that echoed in the fade. Blood dripped down his leg, and he tried to stagger on it, only to fail.

“Elandrin,” Nesterin called, drawing closer to him. She stepped warily, her hand out and supplicating, but stored full with vigilant, prickling mana.

“Elandrin, and...friend...come back to camp. I just want to talk.”

He was panicking. She could see it in the way his shoulders shook. She’d never seen an abomination panic before- not even the child abomination on the road to Serault.

“It’s alright,” she tried. “Elandrin, listen to my voice. You have nothing to fear from us. Come back to camp.”

Elandrin and the demon inside of him took a step forwards, and she let out a sigh of relief, loosing a little of the mana that had begun to build and build up inside of her.

Without warning, he lunged again, and this time she was ill-prepared. This attack had no magic in it. He simply grabbed her hair and kneed her firmly in the groin.

 _“Piece of shit,”_ she gasped as an unbearable pain spread out from between her legs, a curl of rage at the pure indecency of the blow also surging inside of her. It was not helped when a swift and dirty punch in the face followed. Nesterin tasted blood in her cheek and fire coursed through her nethers.

An arrow soared through the air, and, still hunched over herself, she had enough mana and presence of mind to swipe it out of the sky with a gust of wind, roaring, “ _Don’t kill him_ ,” at Sera.

But it seemed likely the fight would have to end with Elandrin's death or escape. They were strong and they were more than capable, but Elandrin’s magic was searing and he would not go quietly and he would not submit to them. Briala sliced a deep gash into his face, another onto his arm, and he sent her hurtling backwards. Raw fade cracked around them as the demon made the earth tremble, knocking all three of them to the ground.

Nesterin pushed herself up clumsily with only one arm, aching and panting. As she did so, she felt the rush of the fade and saw the grey-flying figure of another fade-stepper. Elandrin rushed at them again as Revekah re-materialised, grabbing her chain and slipping it around Elandrin’s neck.

She and Nesterin exchanged a glance. Nesterin’s look was one of confusion, Revekah’s was of a violent glee.

Revekah tugged down on Elandrin’s neck, and Briala raced forwards and took up the chain too, tugging with her. Elandrin gasped and choked, his face turning puce. The light and the raw magic slowly receded from his face. His yellow eyes became his own, filled up with fear and water.

“Stop,” Nesterin called, watching him gargle wetly. “Stop. He’s back.”

* * *

 They dragged him back to the camp, using Revekah’s chains to hold him. Nesterin limped as best she could and the burning was such that she didn’t try very hard to stop Sera delivering Elandrin his own swift kick to the privates.

She watched him roll around the flattened grass, clutching himself. Sera went to kick him again, but this time Nesterin did stop her, raising her arm over Sera’s body.

“I’m sorry,” Elandrin said beneath them. He fought back a weak sob, “I’m _sorry_.”  

Nesterin was out of shape. Her throat still burned from an old wound and all of the vomiting she’d been doing. Her head ached, her heart raced, her mana hummed violently and her groin throbbed. She sat heavily on the ground next to Elandrin, hand up in front of her eyes.

“ _Heh_ ...Elgar-fucking-nan, Elandrin,” she panted. “ Banal'ras …. _heh_...ma enfenim. What are you playing at? What have you been playing at this whole time?”  

He sobbed now. Wrenching sobs into his arm that made his whole body tremble. She didn’t know if it was fear or regret or something else.

“You got _so_ lucky that I was a drunk mess who could barely see straight or talk right  for most of the time I knew you,” she confessed sadly.

“Like when you came to me in jail, remember? I thought about booze and I thought about Laisa and I thought about booze some more and I didn’t give you a second thought. Only, it’s so obviously strange. You coming to me right before Laisa was leaving? You must have had that note for hours….”

She supposed it came out confident enough, reasoning through Elandrin’s motives. She knew what she _thought._ Elandrin _had_ wanted to go with Laisa that night. He’d follow her to the end of the world and put up with her sad old alcoholic sister in the bargain. He _was_ going to go with Laisa that night...up until the point when he couldn’t.

“Right?” she prompted when he didn’t answer, a little nervously. She’d lost faith in everything over the course of a few years, her faith in her own ability to read a person being one of the first things to go. “You were ready to follow her, but the spirit stopped you. Right at the last minute. Like you’ve been trying to stop it from running away from us hours and hours every night.”

Down in the dirt, Elandrin was still sobbing. It was a low and broken noise that inevitably tugged at Nesterin’s heart. She placed her hand on the small of his back, and willed forth a healing spell. Simple spirit magic that brought forward fine wisps to work their way through Elandrin. Ostensibly for the cuts and the pain, she meant for the magic to have a deeper meaning. The same spell he had pressed into her when she’d been sobbing in a sewer.

She watched him swallow, look up at the sky and breathe out slowly.

“We had a deal,” Elandrin admitted, heavily. “Help you get healed and as far as the mountains so that you could help Laisa. Then we’d go away and start again. Find a new clan, like always. But it was panicking. It always _panics._ ”

“Would you let me talk to it?” she asked softly.

“You say that like it’s my choice,” he said bitterly.

How funny, was the not at all funny thought that came to her. Elandrin had confused and angered her since the moment they met. When all along, she might have understood him perfectly.

“You don’t talk to demons,” Sera said angrily behind her. “You put them down! _We_ put them down. They fall out of the sky and we slice them up.”

“You might as well put me down too then Sera.”

“You’re not an abomination.”

“I absolutely am,” she shot back heavily and she turned back to Elandrin. “If it doesn’t talk to me, the voices in _my_ head will help me go after the voice in yours,” she said with a grim smile. “You’ve seen me do it before.”

She watched him shut his eyes and go far away inside himself, to consult with things that disturbed his thoughts and his dreams and were present in every moment, every heartbeat and every breath he ever took.

“I really am sorry….” was his last regretful statement, before he shuddered and opened his eyes.

There again was the raw magic singing in his veins.

“Aneth ara,” whispered a heavy, sinister, fade-touched voice. Elandrin had opened his mouth, but the creature inside of him did not use his lips to form the consonants and vowels. Instead, the voice blew through him like a death rattle.

“Andaran atish’an,” she said crisply, she began to store up mana again in her fingers. “Vir tel’lethallin.”

“Ir abelas. Andaran atish’an, _Fen'Harel vehnan_.”

 **“** Don’t call me that,” she snapped in common, feeling a sharp pain in her stomach. “My name is Nesterin Lavellan. What should I call you in return?”  

The creature said nothing. She watched Elandrin’s chest heave, up and down, almost painfully.

“Please, what is your nature?” she implored.

What could she feel in Elandrin? Fear? Despair? Pride? Desire?

And the creature said, looking down, “ _I don’t want to say._...”

“What?”

“I'm not going to fucking say it,” repeated the spirit in a strangely guttural tone. “It is not what I was. Saying it makes it real.”

Nesterin was so taken aback that she had to laugh bitterly.

“My mother falls in love a con man, my eldest sister falls in love with our idiot cousin, I fall in love with the Dread Wolf and my youngest sister falls in love with _this_ …why do the women in my family have the _worst_ taste?”

“It’s not his fault,” said the spirit protectively. “I wanted him because he was brave. The little boy named for an emerald knight. I always want the brave ones. I think I must feel satisfied ruining them at this point.”

Elandrin, trapped inside of his own body, made himself present in the form of a fat tear spilling out of his yellow eyes.

And inside of her own head, Nesterin felt Amaril take in a sharp breath.

_It’s Valour._

_The spirit from your memories? Is that possible?_

_Valour guards Mythal’s children. That is its purpose. I know how it feels. It was my friend once._

Nesterin took a breath and regarded the spirit,

“You are Valour,” she told it firmly.

“That was a _valiant_ twat punch he gave you back there ,was it?” asked Sera blinking.

“It has been a long time since I did anything to deserve that name,” Valour agreed.

“But you _were_ Valour.  Before the veil. You fought alongside Fen’Harel.”

It heaved and lurched inside of Elandrin but stayed silent.

“So...what? You’re Elandrin’s curse? Why did you possess him?”

The night was growing bitterly cold, and she could feel a frost descending on all of them. Nesterin’s teeth began to chatter, but Valour stayed perfectly still, only pulling Elandrin’s head away slightly to mutter:

“You wouldn't understand.”

“I can try to,” said Nesterin staunchly. “I do have an ancient well of knowledge in my head. Mythal's servants remember you, Valour. They could probably fill in a few of the gaps.”

Valour sighed.

“There are so many scars on this shitty, broken world. I'm sorry about that,” it said and then it turned to her and began: “What happened when the veil came down was disaster for the elves. But for the spirits...the fall of Arlathan pales in comparison to the catastrophes upon catastrophes we endured.”

Nesterin frowned, “I didn’t know spirits had suffered.”

“We lost our connection to this world just as this world lost its connection to the fade.”

She thought of Haven, then. Of a lost Dalish elf and the way she was drawn to the most recognisable face she could find amongst strangers. They’d talked about the spirits, at length, her endless questions answered with a bemused/amused kind of tolerance.

“I thought there were spirits who were perfectly happy in the fade. Some of them hate our world even. Like how not everyone wants to go to Rivain…”

“Rivain? _Rivain_?” thundered Valour, turning on her. The fade around it crackled with the heat of its anger and the air tasted like soot and sulphur.

“There are many of us who _live_ for the living. Your waking world _sings_ to us. Every beating heart, every memory and every emotion draws us here. After the veil, it was like being starved and staring at a feast behind glass. I watched my kin grow twisted, be forgotten, be driven insane trying to find a way through. _Is that what happens when you can’t get to Rivain_?”

“I’m sorry,” said Nesterin quickly, feeling a familiar ache in her heart. “That was an incredibly insensitive thing to say. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

Again, she felt the world shifting around her as her understanding shifted and twisted its shape. Solas had said his only friends were the spirits. That they’d shared in his joy and fear and despair. But they’d been hurting too...

"You're a stupid bitch," Valour announced coldly. It's eyes flashed a deeper shade of yellow. And then it seemed to cough, the light slipping back into the weak colour of white wine. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean that." 

"Call her a bitch again..." Briala threatened. 

"Doubly for me," added Sera. 

"Right. Yes. It's just...I _adored_ to be amongst The People,” Valour went on. “I fought with them, side by side as an equal. To leave them would have shattered me into a thousand pieces, so I fought back and took my refuge on this side of the veil. I found willing hosts at first. Something about being so closely bound to the fleshly side helped me to remember when many of my kin might have been wiped clean.”

“Willing hosts at first?” she asked sharply.

“Elandrin said it best. As ages passed, spirits became things to be feared. I had to be creative in my enticements. I watched how stories developed amongst the elves and I created my own. And because of it, I call myself what I am: a curse.”

“You’ve been passed from Dalish elf to Dalish elf for centuries.”

“Your people really will do anything for the sake of tradition.”

“And the weight of the lie corrupted you.”

Valour laughed hollowly. The sinister edge around it was unsettling.

“I was not Valour, even then. I was not Valour for centuries before the veil was created.”

 _Valour didn’t stay in the temple,_ Amaril agreed. _It was not there to guard the children of Mythal when our terrible ends came to us._

“What happened?”

“The People stopped wanting me. I loved them. I was formed to love them and be amongst them and fight to protect them. But they came to resent me,” said Valour miserably.

“Why?”

“You ask me this, _former_ Inquisitor Lavellan? I would have thought you knew all too well.”

Nesterin looked down at her hand and said weakly: “Unless spirits can get drunk, I’m afraid you’ll have to enlighten me.”

And getting drunk seemed a wonderful prospect. The uncertainty, the tension in her body, the sharp pain in her head would have been carried away with a little alcohol like a leaf carried gently along a stream.

“After our great and noble war, other _petty_ wars followed, petty wars and power grabbing that killed thousands and squalid little murders and corruption and degeneration. I began to fit less and less into the shape of things. My old squadron, my friends, tried to be good to me, but I could never be what they needed in the end. Your Dread Wolf can bend into all manner of shapes and he doesn’t break. I tried to be the same. I broke.”

“What do you mean? All manner of shapes?”

“Surely you’ve seen shades of them? Solas, The Soldier, The Spy, The Fade Walker and Philosopher, The Sage, The Dread Wolf, The Destroyer. _The Massive_ _Cunt_ ,” the spirit spat so bitterly that Nesterin had to recoil a little from the violence of its words.

Behind her, Nesterin heard Sera snigger at the spirit’s profane utterance.

“Were you ever a spy for him?” Nesterin demanded.

Valour growled. “I was a soldier, not a spy. But if it makes you finally, _finally_ give up on this: I….was drawn to you….I wanted to meet you. I wanted to know what you were doing and I lied about it. So yes, in some ways I suppose I _technically_ was a spy. But not for the Dread Wolf. Never for him.”

Nesterin pressed her fingers to her temple and felt sorrow rising up like a tide. She didn’t know if she was strong enough to push it down, not without something solid beneath her feet to anchor her.

“You still don’t believe do you?” asked Valour. It snarled. “Believe this. We spirits are meant to be simple. I have become corrupted, and ugly and entangled- but I hate him. I hate him with a burning simplicity that has given me the strength to endure over the wretched aeons.”

“But then why run?” she asked and the aching sadness made her voice sharp and low. “Why not offer to help fight him? Or why not help him bring the veil down again, so that the spirits are free?”

“I told you,” sniffed Valour. “I became corrupted before the veil. It was inevitable. Stopping him would not end my torment. If it were even possible. And he would likely kill me first. He has killed so many of us now….I preserve this miserable existence above all else.  If the veil falls, I daresay I shall become even more wretched and twisted. If it does not, I will still grow more wretched and twisted,” said Valour finally.

“And what about Laisa?”

Her poor sister, who had given her body to this abomination. Hawke had done the same, she remembered. She pictured that funny, garrulous man on the battlements of Skyhold and the sad look in his eye when he said:

“I suppose you’re going to ask me about Anders aren’t you? Everyone does. And then they write a poorly rhymed song about it.”

And she’d said,

“Only if you want to talk about it. Otherwise, I’d rather write a poorly rhymed song about killing Corypheus.”

“Then you’re in luck. It’s damn tricky to rhyme anything with Corypheus.

And then he’d condemned himself to a lonely death in the fade, surrounded by nightmares.

“They fell in love, child,” said Valour sadly. “As sweet and as simple as that. I warned him. I warned him I would be no good. But he loves your sister, and he tried to change our nature to be with her.”

Another fat tear slipped down the cheek of Valour’s host.

“Then leave,” she insisted. “Let me find a way for you to leave Elandrin so that they can be happy together.”

“Are you offering yourself to me instead?” asked Valour quietly, an icy edge in its voice.

It was almost touching to see the panic explode inside of the friends she had surrounded herself with. Inside of her head, Amaril hissed,

 _Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare,_ and made her head hurt with the heat behind it, just as Briala gripped onto her shoulder and Sera raised her bow.

“She bloody frigging well is not,” she said hotly, arrow aimed directly at Valour.

“He didn’t know the whole story did he?” Nesterin asked Valour.

“He knows now. He is hurting very badly. He would like someone to take this pain away. You could help him.”

 _Don’t you dare. I swear. There’s no more_ **_room_ ** _._

“How about I help an arrow into his brain meat?”

“I have knowledge…” Valour hissed. “Knowledge that would help you do what you have set out to do.”

Nesterin reached out and found the tip of Sera’s arrow, pulling it down. Their fear for her _would_ have been touching, if her friends had not revealed just how weak they thought she was. Weak against temptation and a few stray words of seduction. Though, to be fair, she had not given them much evidence to the contrary.

“Do you really think I’d fall for that? You just said all you care about is survival,” snapped Nesterin. “There’s no way you’d help me.”

“I have many memories of the years before Arlathan fell,” said Valour, changing its approach smoothly. “I could show them to you. Solas lies but I can give you the truth about him. I can give you the peace that your heart is forever aching for.”

“I have my own memories,” she said icily, tapping her temple. And then, softer, she added: “The Well of Sorrows showed _you_ to me. You seemed very brave. You said you had hopes that The People would see that true Valour is as compassionate as it is courageous….”

“They did not see it. They cared only for power. They became so cruel.”

“I see it,” Nesterin insisted. “I learned the ways of the ancient mage warriors for a reason. Courage and compassion. These are good words to live by. This is a _good_ purpose. I know it could be your purpose again, if you stopped hurting and corrupting people.”

“But you too have already been corrupted beyond hope of salvation. I have seen how the light inside of you has withered and died, da’len. We would make a perfect match.”

It wasn’t wrong. She couldn’t pretend otherwise, clenching her fist and telling herself that this was not a surprise.

“Your friends would want you to try to be brave,” she said firmly. "And try to be better." 

Valour tipped Elandrin’s head at her, and the jerking motion of Elandrin’s body, controlled by the spirit was like that of a marionette on a string.

“What do you know of my friends?” Valour asked her icily. “What has this Well of Sorrows showed you?”

“I saw Felassan-”

“His shape was killed in the Fade,” Valour snapped. “By the Dread Wolf himself. You don’t think he would want me to run and run as fast as I can, knowing what has become of him?”

Nesterin thought back to the young soldiers present around Valour in Amaril’s memory.

“A woman,” she said, thinking of the one who had pulled Amaril up by the scruff of her neck and called her scrapper. “With black curls and big eyes.”

“Taranehn,” said Valour wistfully. “A warrior woman who was bright and brave. The first of us to die. Before the veil was created. She could not condone the plans and so she plotted her own betrayal. Dead by the Dread Wolf’s hands. She tried to stop him, and where did that get her?”

“Another man,” Nesterin whispered, barely able to hear her own voice over the roaring in her ears. “With almost pink hair-”

“Panellas. I never heard of him after the veil. Lost to the same fate as an entire race of people, I expect….”

“No,” said a firm voice behind Elandrin. Revekah stood up, she was still chained to the spirit, and honestly Nesterin had forgotten she was still there. Just as she had forgotten she was still in the woods, still at the camp near the shabby carts and still in her body.

“No. Fen’Harel killed Panellas himself too,” said Revekah. Valour stared at her and she gave him an ugly smile and spat on the ground.

“Are you certain?”

“Halla’s mouth,” said Revekah, drawing her thumb across her neck and saying “ _squish_ ” before she turned to wink at Nesterin and sat herself down again.

“That pains me to hear,” said Valour, before he turned to Nesterin. “We helped him, in the final days of Arlathan. We had not seen him for more than five hundred years, I should think, when he asked for us.  Our _commander._  But he called and each of us answered. And what was our thanks?”

 _Ask about me,_ Amaril insisited _. I want to see if Valour remembers me._

But Revekah was too quick with her own question, asking Valour,“What were they like? Before, in the war?”

“Oh?”

“Your friends. Panellas and the others? ”

Valour sighed, “Reckless. Heroic. Desperate to prove themselves and filled with the deep love of brothers in arms. We travelled far below the ground together. We laughed loudly. We teased one another. And we always came together to do what was right.”

Nesterin thought about Dorian teaching Sera to swear in Tevine, Cole asking Blackwall about his beard, Cassandra and Varric sniping, the Iron Bull and Solas playing chess and Vivienne and herself comparing spirit blade hilts. She thought about playing Wicked Grace, and telling stories, and people running to help her when she collapsed broken and bruised at the end of a long walk through a blizzard. She thought about meat stew and the burning liquor Bull drank after killing a high dragon and about little pastries and dried biscuit rations in the Hinterlands. She thought about Josephine plucking paperwork out of her fingers, and Cassandra confessing her admiration and the first night in the castle after Corypheus was dead. 

She couldn’t see through the tears in her eyes, and felt them slide from her chin onto her knees. Quickly, her hand went to her eyes to swipe at them savagely. And then Sera stuck one of her warm, dirty fingers into Nesterin’s ear.

Through weak sobs, Nesterin laughed. And when she looked up, Elandrin’s eyes were his own again, full of horror and full of tears. 


	41. A Dream of Amaril (6)

I am on my back, beside my grotto, basking in the sun of the courtyards, listening to the song on the wind. There are rich vowels sounding amongst the leaves and the spirits sigh when they dance amongst whipped up clusters of poplar fluff.

Something inside of me is slowing, growing closer to the minute magics in the smell of the summertime. The crystals in my grotto catch the light and seem to say, _Amaril, Amaril, Amaril._ And yet I am still drawn to the sky. I watch clouds roll past and wonder where they are going.

Soon I will be grown, I tell myself. Soon I will follow them and see where they lead.

“By the dirt, by the wind, by the moons and the stars, this is the worst thing to have _ever_ happened to me,” frets the Housekeeper, pacing up and down the gardens of the summerhouse.

She really ought to stop and listen more. She’d like it.

“You’re older than I am. How is that possible?” laughs one of the servants. “It’s only Mythal.”

“Unannounced! Out of the blue! And the house is a wreck and a ruin. She’ll take one look at the place and I’ll be tossed out into the forests.”

“Just Mythal?” asks another, a woman sharply.

“And a retinue!” the Housekeeper all but sobs. “I’d say one hundred minimum. You know how she _collects_ people”

“But surely not the rest of her family?”

“Just her. And the other _one hundred._ To fit here! Amongst all of the children I have to put up with. And what about the lawn? What about the blasted lawn?”

There are still snatches of refugees outside, though most have moved on. They wash their laundry in the lake.We have started to see the minute details that mark them as different. Perhaps their eyes. Perhaps their ears are too large. Perhaps their noses are shorter and uglier.   _They are different from us_ . _They can’t be trusted._

“There’s not much we can do about the lawn. But we can get the summerhouse into shape. It might take all of us, but I’m sure we could do it in no time,” the servants soothe the Housekeeper.

“Can I help?” I ask.  

“What?” the Housekeeper looks at me up and down. “You’re getting older, Amaril. Can’t hurt to learn. I suppose you’ll be a servant somewhere soon. ”

“I will not,” I tell her staunchly. “I’m going to be an explorer... or an architect... or an adventurer.”

_I am going to die in the temple. Drowned in a well._

The Housekeeper sighs,“You spend too much time with Valour. Did it tell you about all the explorers and adventurers and architects who died under the ground or when the buildings collapsed or when the ground churned up the sea? You want someone protecting you, keeping you safe from all that.”

“Someone like Mythal?” I scoff.

“Mythal is the _best_ protection,” says the Housekeeper sharply. “You don’t want to end up dead or on the lawn do you?”

“No, but-”

“ _No but_ ,” she mimics and I clench my fist. “Do you want me to let you help or not?”

The Housekeeper calls the servants of the house out to the front steps. They all wear the same loose light blue clothing, chatting to one another as they take their places, spread out along the grey stone balustrades. She stands in front of them and raises her hand as the talking slowly dies down.

“I want it to look as clean as it was in the summers before the war,” she tells them. “Do you remember the green and the gold stretching out beyond the horizon? The brightest blue of the lake and the sky? Recall the patterns of the water lilies. Geometrical precision. And the delicacy of the orchids. Never gaudy. Only intrinsically beautiful, it should be an extension of all we see around us. And get right into the _corners_. The dust always builds up in the corners.”

The ritual is complicated. I’m not entirely sure how much use I am, given that I was not born before the war and have only seen the summer house now. I think it’s perfectly beautiful as it is. I try to feel at the fade, as I have been taught, focusing upon the movements and emotions of the other servants. But I begin to drift away to simply watch, as a bright sphere descends across the whole building.

It makes me think of a soap bubble in the bathhouse: a thin film over air, clear but catching the light, shifting from purple to yellow to blue. It even smells a little soapy.

“Should have grabbed a snack before hand,” I hear a servant mutter beside me as they go on casting. By the end, I’m slightly bored. I look over at the House Keeper, her head bowed and her brows creased in concentration. I wonder if she’d shout at me if I moved away from the formation.

The spell goes on, and on, and on and on, and I lose myself a little to time. Then, the sphere _pops_ into nothing and the summer house stands, gleaming and bright before us.

 _This is the magic that the_ **_servants_ ** _do? What were the evanuris capable of?_ Marvels the voice of the body I inhabit.

* * *

 They put us all in clothes I’ve never even seen before. The children of the Summer House primped and polished and cleaned like so many stones turned to crystal, wearing deep blue. The servants take special effort with their uniforms too, pinning up hems that have loosened, cleaning off stains and putting many braids into their hair.

“When she comes through, start your song,” one of our teachers says to the cluster of us gathered in the courtyards. I roll my eyes, finding the Wildcat girl’s- Athim’s- too. She smirks at me and I smirk back, before I remember that all of the other children hate her. I turn my head away and curl my finger through a strand of my yellow hair. It hangs down limply and I sigh.

Everyone else looks so fine featured and dressed up and pretty. Even the dirty refugee Athim has lovely thick auburn hair and narrow green eyes that sparkle with sharpness. But I look over at Valour, standing guard of Mythal’s children, and the other clusters of spirits, including the gloomy figure of Charity and I tell myself that it doesn’t matter. It’s simply matter. And there are so many other beautiful things to find and explore when I finally leave this place.

After the eluvians spread out around the well come to life, the first of Mythal’s retinue spills out. Other servants come, and greet their friends amongst the rest of us, kissing cheeks and pressing hands together. Then clever scholars and secretaries, dressed in plain garb, carrying papers. Mythal has her learned mages with her too, ascetic looking creatures with shaved heads, who crackle with centuries of secrets.

Amongst the sentinels, dressed in armour, I look for Solas- or rather _she_ does- but I either do not see him or I cannot remember him being there. The nobles follow them, wearing rich gold and deep blue and fine silks. They are radiant and cold all at once. With shining hair and perfect faces, holding themselves quite properly. Straight and aloof. Bringing with them the rich scent of roses and honey and amber.

“Sing,” the teacher urges us, and Mythal comes out.

I hear the body I inhabit breathe in sharply.

We see a momentary glimpse of a woman, tall and thick and dressed in blue, before the flashes of her memory invade my own.

The sharpened figure of Flemeth standing before her, as voices in the Well of Sorrows begin to sing. The stern face of her Keeper, who bids her to sit, brushes her hair, talks to her of mages and templars and sends her away with a blessing from the All Mother. She sees Andraste, mother of a nation, burning on a pyre. She sees Vivienne, furious and disappointed and still holding her. She sees women in the Hinterlands, in Crestwood, in the alienages of Val Royeaux. She sees a dead woman hanging from a tree and her mother, fat with her sisters. She sees a lonely night, bottles of wine and bitter tea.

She has walked through ruins and mosaics, and viewed the frightening form of a dragon with narrow eyes, and has been taught songs of death and sorrow. Because she is Dalish, she has been made to see Mythal as a being, a perfect thing who rejects with disinterest a body, the aspects of sex and the touch of the grass beneath her hands in favour of an abstract kind of sublimity.

Silly quick child. Who tugs clumsily at the fade and still treats it like a stranger. Who greedily gulps poison and treats her own body like one too. In the best days of my people, the fade and the waking world were _together,_ always. Two forms intertwined in magnificent union, pushing and pulling and twirling and dancing.

And that is Mythal. And anyone born after the veil will never truly comprehend.

“How lovely,” murmurs Mythal, palms together like praying when we finish our song. She turns to the assembled and announces, “It is good to be home. Amongst my children and my friends.”

“Would you have the children sing again? Or would you like to rest?”

“Rest?” asks Mythal, an inscrutable expression crossing over her face. “We have only just arrived. There is work to do. Vilthuril?” she beckons to the Housekeeper who steps forwards eagerly.

“The people on my lawn? Have them brought to me in the Petitioner’s Chamber. I will hear them.”

She turns again to us, the children, and smiles, before she strides away, her many people following.

* * *

 The change in the atmosphere of the summerhouse unsettles me. With the war and Mythal’s absence it appears that the house and the servants had grown lax by the time I came amongst them.

My childhood days were filled with idleness and drifting, concerned with staying cloistered away and surviving the darkness above everything. Left to my own devices, I suppose my mind grew lazy in it, I learned to value my solitude above all else and the benefits of a good place to hide and watch snatches of life pass me by.

Now all of my favorite hiding spots are filled. Filled with activity and members of Mythal’s retinue, talking, drinking, practising music and magic- sometimes at the same time. The mages and the scribes are making plans, on draft tables in the sunshine, squabbling over the finer points of the architecture.

I don’t particularly like the way they eye my grotto.

As for the rest, I’d like to ask them about life outside the Summer House. I have so many questions. I have heard about Arlathan, about other great houses and natural phenomenon. About distant lands, different people, different spirits and different magic. But I fear these new people will find me stupid and slow. Unmannered, unpractised, uncultured. A little weed who grew up in the dark.

I think of what the Housekeeper said. That I would only ever be a servant. And I feel very depressed.

We take our dinners together now, not coming and going, drifting into the dining hall in shifts. Mythal does not eat, to the consternation of the cook and the Housekeeper, but she watches us, from a table at the top of the hall, talking with the nobles and the learned mages and the scribes.

“Is she different? She seems different,” I catch in a snatched whisper amongst the servants.

“Different how? I hardly remember how it was before the war.”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure if I remember properly either….”

* * *

 I eschew dinner one night to tend to my grotto, still convinced that someone is going to tear it down. I decide I will simply have to make it look nicer. A little more crystal here. A splash of colour there. Though my desperation seems to be shaping it into something bordering dangerously on overdone.

“...talk of giving up their bodies in the hopes of learning more from them…” I hear in a snatched conversation. Naturally, I duck out of sight.

“Elgar’nan has forbidden it,” drifts Mythal’s voice. She has stolen away to the garden this evening too, it seems, and has managed to shake off all of the people that usually surround her. Except one.  

He’s dressed differently. _Again_. No longer a dying, dirty creature, nor a gilded general either. So many different forms and different shapes. Just as Valour said. I wonder which one this is?

Barefoot and bundled up in a grey, cowl, hiding whatever is underneath. In the waning light, I catch glimpses of worn leather, somewhat shabby looking  against the finery of Mythal.

“Such an act will be considered unforgivable, worthy only of exile and banishment. To _any_ who attempt to do so. I stand by his judgement,” Mythal goes on. She raises her eyebrows and smiles a little impishly. “For once.”

“I understand,” says Solas. He draws his head away and his expression suggest he does not. “But...if it could help…. And if anyone should doubt my commitment-”

“I would have thought you were clever enough to deal with that. And we are in a different kind of war this time,” Mythal interrupts. “If you are forced to drift too far from words into hasty actions, I fear the waters may begin to muddy for you and distance will be difficult. It is important to me that you keep your shape.”

“And this means, what? That _you_ doubt my commitment? That decades spent in darkness wasn’t enough to prove myself?”

As they draw very close to the grotto, their voices rise in volume and I let my breathing quiet.

“It is my responsibility to doubt at all times,” Mythal soothes. “To question and to strive for yet deeper commitment. Why do you think we put the statues up at Arlathan?”

“I would have preferred a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’,” he says, a little bitterly.

There is silence for a moment, and then I feel something kick my foot. I must have left it hanging out of my hiding spot because I look up and Solas is staring at me, one eyebrow quirked.

“This is Amaril,” Solas announces me flatly to Mythal. “She’s every shadow you’ve ever seen. She lurks in doorways, in crevices and just behind walls.”

My chest begins to pound as I pull myself up. My snooping is tolerated, treated with annoyance or dim threats, but faced with Mythal herself I am terrified of what my punishment will be. Similarly, the prospect of a face to face interview with her is truly a frightening one.

“Leave, Amaril. There are no secrets here for you to collect,” dismisses Solas, and I am more than happy to do so.

“Nonsense,” says Mythal waving her hand. “Come here, Amaril. I’d like to see you.”

“I really think that we should return to our conversation-” Solas goes on, but Mythal stops him.

“I hear this is your grotto, Amaril.”

I look panicking, behind her to Solas, who tips his head and shrugs, still annoyed at me for interrupting.

“You...do?” I ask in disbelief.

“Oh yes. I like to hear of _all_ of my children’s achievements. Solas makes me very proud with his cunning and his bravery,” she teases him. “And I am very proud of your beautiful work here.”

I look down and colour.

“Thank you, My Lady” Solas prompts me.

“Thank you, My Lady.”

To my terror, Mythal steps forwards and loops her arm around mine. Her body is cool to the touch, and her skin is incredibly soft. I get the sensation of being bathed in moonlight as she leads me, through the garden.

“You know, I have always found a great affinity with people who create and nurture. Much more so than people who destroy,” she says and leans in, conspiratorially to me, “Our kind is very good at it. We can create and nurture _life_ inside of us. It is the most remarkable thing in this world.”

Solas snorts. And then stifles it into a cough, Mythal turns to look at him.

“You disagree?”

“In the dreaming, anyone can couple magic and will to create,” Solas points out “And what about the life of spirits?”

“And, as Solas demonstrates, his kind’s appreciation for the physical often ends moments _before_ the point of creation,” says Mythal primly.

She stops to examine the flowers, turning the head of a hydrangea backwards and forwards as Solas sputters a little, one hand over his face.

“Don’t blush.  It _is_ remarkable. This constant dialogue inside of us all, between form and essence, time and fruitfulness, between the waking and the dreaming. And it is unfortunate when someone confuses this dialogue for an _argument_ ,” she says pointedly. “What do you think, Amaril?”

“Oh...I….I don’t think I understand,” I stammer.

“Perhaps you will learn,” Mythal agrees. “Some choose not to. Many more choose to learn imperfectly and there’s very little I can do about that.”

At the base of one of the flower beds, she kneels down, hitching her skirts slightly and sighing.

“Such is the nature of nurturing, too light a touch and the flowers either wither without attention or grow wild. Too heavy and they gorge themselves or become stunted. The trick is to know when to nudge and when to _push_ ,” she grasps at a long stalk of ivy that has twined it’s way through the bed, trying to strangle the life from the delicate flowers within it. She tugs it out of the dirt with ease. 

But the ivy only wanted to live too...

“And when to withhold completely...” mutters Solas.

“I love to garden myself. Are you partial to it?” Mythal asks me, ignoring him.

“Oh yes. I like the flowers very much,” I say, and then look at my feet. “ _Thank you for bringing them back_ , My Lady.”

“You are very welcome, child. Come, help me attend to the weeds,” she says, beckoning me to kneel beside her. “I see that they have grown bolder in my absence. And I think I should like to talk to you a little more about the nature of my garden….”

_Amaril...did the All-Mother give you a talk about sex? I don’t think I should be allowed to see this. My Keeper would have an aneurysm._

“But-” Solas steps forwards.

“And Solas ought to return to his duties,” she says, still smiling at me.

“Oh? Just...like that?” he asks, a little hurt. As I bask in the pale blue light of the All-Mother, it seems she is content to leave him in the dark. It looks as if her shadow stings. But he pulls himself together and he nods. “Of course.”

“We will see each other again. As soon as you are done.”

 _A shabby man in a bright garden. He turns to a woman and he says ‘_ **_goodbye’_ ** _, and it’s soft and it’s so sad. Is this a dream of Amaril or of Nesterin? The garden is bright, the fade washes over skin like a whisper and seems to belong to old things. But the heartbreak, the tensing of his shoulders and the turning away- surely that belongs to now? Are their memories finally bleeding together into one?_


	42. Progress! Crappy Progress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to MistressDragonFlame for the chapter title, it felt eminently applicable.

There were moments, and they were becoming more and more frequent, when even the simple, usually so instinctive act of placing one foot in front of the other became difficult.

That morning, Nesterin found herself two paces outside of the cart, stuck still in the dirt, staring out at a pale pink, slowly encroaching dawn, not really seeing it at all.  The voices were whispering, the birds had begun their morning chorus, the dreams of Amaril lingered and all of them blurred into something without shape.

What was she doing out here? Why had she gotten up? For a piss? For fresh air? To take her turn guarding Elandrin and Revekah? For water? She couldn’t remember at all. Wasn’t even necessarily certain she was awake. Not when the colours around her were bleeding like paint on wet paper.

 _You were restless in the cart,_ Amaril whispered. _Look up. Go over here._  And she might have felt the other woman's hand on her wrist, guiding her. 

Blinking and trying to focus, she looked over and saw Elandrin sat, like her mirror image, staring blankly at a patch of grass on the floor, tied in the same position they had left him in. She might have thought that he had gone away inside, and Valour was seeing through him. But his eyes were his own, finely shaped and yellow and a little dull.

She went over to the charred earth that had once been the fire and went into his pack. Elandrin didn’t stop her, didn’t even seem to register her as she pulled out a clay pot and proffered it to him.

“Hungry?” she asked.

Elandrin looked down at the gelatinous, quivering Var-Numin and sighed so heavily it seemed as if _everything_ was inside of it.

“We are the dalish,” he murmured, and she joined in with him:

_“Keepers of the lost lore and walkers of the lonely path…”_

“All those times we ever said it...did you ever expect the Oath of the Dales to be so damn _literal_?” he said bitterly, more to himself- she thought- than anything.

“Oaths are supposed to be solemn, important things. People shouldn’t make them unless they expect to be held to them,” she said, sitting beside him. “I thought I knew what I was doing when I drank from that well and invited all those voices into my head, I had every chance to just walk away, I knowingly gave over a part of myself..."

More than a part. It grew and grew and grew, with every dream and day and moment...

"But you didn't have a choice...I’m so  _so_ sorry Elandrin.”

“My mother and father got a bag of pelts and a dagger in exchange for my soul,” he said hollowly.“It’s not a nice feeling, knowing that my entire self-hood was worth so little to them.”

“I’m sure they didn’t know,” her eyes flickered over him and she said emphatically, “Valour is so broken and so desperate so it would have said anything. Your parents probably just wanted you to have a better life.”

He sniffed, looking past her into forests. Desperately wanting to find something to anchor himself, she knew the look and the feeling. Desperately wanting to hope.

“But I let it in,”he said. “After Keeper Glennis was dead. Keeping the lost lore like I thought I was supposed to…dammit," he gritted his teeth. "Briala was right about us. All those mage children being traded at the Arlathvhen? Generation after generation of Keepers and Firsts being ripped away from their families so that the magic gets nice and spread out? We're all idiots and our history is a gilded _piece of shit_ ,” his voice broke slightly. Elandrin looked down again, close to tears. “We suffered and we died and we hid and we endured and we hurt our _children_  , for what? We lose _ourselves_ to it. For what?”

Nesterin thought about Crestwood and kneeling on the ground before the last hammer shook the rocks from the foundation of everything she’d ever believed in. She put a gentle hand on Elandrin’s neck, but used a little force to make him look up at her.

“I _know,_ Elandrin. Our people have done the worst of things with the best of intentions. And most days I have no idea how I even begin to reconcile that with the fact that I still love the Dalish. Very much....I really screwed up at the Arlathvhen. I should have helped us move forwards," she said bitterly. "I just got drunk in a pile of halla shit instead." 

“Not sure how you would have gotten a word in, even if you tried. The Shem's false prophet with her bare face? Shouting over all the clans? Shouting over the centuries and centuries of tradition." 

“No. I fucked up. It's like you said. I'm never in any situations that aren't complicated,” she said, scooping up a bit of Var Numin and shoving it into her mouth. It truly was the most awful taste in the world. One of the ant embryos popped in her mouth, and she _crunched_ it. She took a little more and Elandrin watched her, a flicker of confusion crossing over his features.

“One of Deshanna’s lessons,” she explained. “Maybe it’s tradition and you know it, most likely it’s because she’s…Deshanna,” Nesterin laughed and more salted bone jelly slid down her throat. “She used to say, realising you are wrong is hard to swallow. Admitting mistakes means humbling yourself and taking the bitter punishment.”

Elandrin looked away and muttered, “Stop it.”

“I’ve been a total _shit_ to you,” she confessed, hence the Var Numin and another scoop. “But you haven’t given up on me. You healed me. You fought tooth and nail against the Spirit inside you to do it. I know it was for Laisa, as her older sister I'm so _glad_ it was for Laisa. So I need to apologize.”

“Should I admit that it was slightly gratifying to watch you suffer?” he said in a low voice. “After everything you put your sisters through…”

That proved more bitter to swallow than the Var Numin, but she took it. All of those people she’d invited to watch as she let herself slide further and further downwards...especially her sisters. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to wash the stink of shame away.

“Sorry,” sniffed Elandrin.

“It’s alright. I deserve that. Chin, chin,” she said, and scooped up a little more Var Numin.

Before it touched her lips, Elandrin leaned over and slapped it from her hand. Jellied lumps hit the floor and glistened like crystals in the light of the morning.

“Stop it. What are you doing?” Elandrin asked sharply.

“Admitting to my mistakes? Showing penance? I thought that was supposed to be a good thing….”

“No. You’re just trying to be a martyr. I’ve seen enough drunks, even amongst our people, to know this dance. Making mistakes, making a big empty show of punishing yourself, wallowing, letting it wash over you and then going off and getting so drunk you can hardly stand. Over and over and over.”

She watched his fists tremble and his knuckles turn white, as every deliberate blow he took struck their intended target with a force that left her breathless and aching.

“I’m starting to see why Laisa likes you so much,” was all she could really fashion in response.

“-Is what a martyr would say,” he interrupted, still furious. “Don’t eat a disgusting metaphor just to appease me. Just be _better._ Stay sober. And save Laisa!”

When he said her name, he bowed his head, and began to cry again. Not wrenching sobs, but something weak and hurt and broken.

“I miss her too,” said Nesterin, a little hollowly. She was still reeling.

“I can’t ever see her again,” said Elandrin miserably, wiping the tears from his eyes.

“Is that Valour telling you this?”

“It’s not called _Valour_. Not anymore,” he hissed. “No. Well...yes, obviously. It lives in me and through me. Always. It still wants to run away and hide in a hole. But I’m saying it too.”

“No.”

“How do I face her now, after all I know of my nature? How do I say, it’s me and I love you, but also this ancient spirit has a hold over me and it’s rotten and corrupted and I’ll always be rotten and corrupt because of it too?” he turned to her, eyes wild and glistening and his voice trembling and getting higher in pitch with every word. “You really want that kind of miserable life for your bright and brilliant sister?”

This dance again. As long as the music played, everyone was trapped in their own unique ways. Nesterin pictured a shield, a battered one, tossed out after one too many battles, and the scratches knocked into it by swords and time. Hold a candle to it and stare too closely at it, and the scratches might seem to arrange themselves into endless cycles and patterns.

“I won’t let you do that,” Nesterin mumbled. Elandrin ignored her.

“It knows I mean to run from her. So it has given me leave to travel with you as far as the Grey Wardens. After that...we have to part ways.”

Another person she would feel compelled to save, Nesterin thought dimly. Another heartache when she failed. Every road led back to the bottom of the bottle.

“At least your oath will come true,” said Elandrin grimly.

Nesterin wanted a drink so badly she could barely breathe.

“My oath?”

“You told Laisa ‘Elandrin’s not getting within a mile of you for the rest of your life. I can promise you that’. And now I never will.”

* * *

 “So. I don’t get it. Elfy Andrew’s the prisoner now? Or...whatever _It_ is. But Revekah’s still also our prisoner too?”

As they reached the foothills of the Vimmark mountain range, Sera looked behind her towards the assembled. Elandrin was now chained to Revekah, both of them bound tightly around the wrist as they tramped upwards from the dried valleys of stone towards the narrow, rocky pathways.

“Elandrin’s not an it,” Nesterin informed her firmly. “And no one’s our prisoner. Elandrin’s agreed to wear the chains as a precaution. And we’re still going to use Revekah to bargain with.”

“This whole mess makes my head hurt,” said Sera, wrinkling up her nose and shaking her roughly shorn yellow hair about.

Their path got steeper, and rocks began to slip under their feet. The vegetation thinned and soon only hardy pines persisted along the mountain path. Fallen brown needles spread out along the ground, with sharpened points that clung to their skin.

“You really think chains will be enough to hold back an abomination?” Briala asked her, brow furrowed with concern.

It was a fair enough question. Honestly, the chains were really more for Elandrin’s own peace of mind than anything else.

“It’s not an abomination,” Nesterin said. “It’s Elandrin and Valour. Two beings that are capable of incredible strength and bravery… They both just have to remember it.”

“It wants to possess you,” Briala pointed out. “It’s made its intentions perfectly clear. You really think it’s all that wise to keep it so close?”

“Welcome to life as a mage,” sniffed Nesterin. “Danger is always somewhere nearby. Welcome to the endless dialogue between fear and certainty, the push and pull of your body and the fade. That always descends into an argument…”

Briala looked behind her, staring at Elandrin. Her eyes narrowed and she pursed her lips, thinking.  

“We’re more attractive to the spirits aren’t we? More attractive than non-mages.”

“There’s power in possessing us. And we’re an easy way through the veil," said Nesterin, repeating word for word the voices from the well. There was barely a pause now, between the listening and the translating, she could do it without thinking, simply letting them talk through her. 

“But it’s more than that, Valour said that The People sang to him. That the veil was like the glass that kept them from the feast.”

“It did. Why?”

“What you said about pushing and pulling? I’m just trying to imagine the kind of pressure that might be building up on the other side of the veil as we speak.”

Nesterin became more aware of herself and turned to Briala sharply, “And what? You’re wondering whether it’s intentional or-”

“Some kind of terrible side effect,” Briala agreed.

Nesterin frowned. So many pieces on the board. So many knots to navigate...the past whispered, the present ached, time was bleeding together. Her body and her world was a battleground, everything was lies and mistranslations and faded memory.

And she _still_ had no idea how this widespread weakening of the veil had even come about. Revekah had said, under questioning, ask _her_ \- as if she ever knew anything about anything. Ever.

Ask her?

But Nesterin had spent a great portion of her time in the Inquisition keeping the fade _at bay_...sealing rifts with the anchor, fighting off demons, sending mages to measure the strength of the veil and activate ancient elven artefacts. She had even activated twenty five of them personally.

Why did she always insist on doing everything herself?

Twenty five mysterious orbs of glowing green light spread across southern Thedas. That _strengthened_ the veil.

At Solas’ request.

To _strengthen_ the veil....somehow. The specifics of it had never really been that clear.

 _An endless dialogue between two forms,_ Amaril whispered to her. The words of Mythal handed down to her across millennia. _That descends into an argument. Pushing and pulling. Dancing together. After the push...then comes the pull._

Nesterin tried not to panic, tried not to jump to a hasty conclusion, tried to remind herself that the veil was still _here_ , all around her like a thick coat or a light hand at the base of her spine, still holding her fixed and still holding back the end of everything.

_He murdered his friends. Valour hates him. He spied for Mythal. He seemed so sad when he said goodbye._

It was entirely possible that the ancient elven artefacts were another thing about Solas that desperately needed reexamining.

“Thoughts?” asked Briala, carefully regarding the way she had seized up and retreated into her own thoughts.

“Just one,” said Nesterin flatly. “A word. With four letters.”

* * *

They got to the Grey Warden outpost before Nesterin could work out the best way to broach the topic with Revekah. Though it was entirely possible that, for all her careful planning of the best way to proceed, she was actually actively _avoiding_ broaching the topic.

That she didn’t want to ask unless she was certain. That she didn’t want to even know, if the theory should prove correct.

Because then...well. It was her fault. Wasn’t it?

Bel panicking as sparks flew from her fingers. Clan Lavellan leaving Wycome, a young girl who’d had to leave her love behind, the child abomination in the forest. The burned remnants of his clan. The exploding alienage, the doll’s dressmaker above the butcher’s shop and all of the corpses lined out on the street. _Her fault. Her fault. Her fault._

In the back of her mind, Elandrin reminded her sharply not to be a martyr. Not to give way to guilt and empty self flagellation and the drivingly desperate urge to drink.

Put one foot in front of the other. Stay sober. Save Laisa. That was all she had to do. _Accept the blood to make it better..._

Her feet felt heavy, the grey mountains around them melted, the whispers from the Well of Sorrows sang in harmony.

The closest outpost to the foothills was relatively large, but it was not ornate. A severe block of stone rising out of the mountain with high walls for the lookouts and a single grey tower rising above it. The sort of place that relayed food and troops further into the mountains, Nesterin didn’t doubt.

Grey Wardens carried alcohol unique to themselves, mixing drink from half full bottles. Nesterin had scavenged many from Grey Warden ruins, and ended up raiding the supply during her last days at Skyhold. What had she tried now? A bottle marked "Vintage: Warden Daedalam. Extra red”. A bottle marked "Vintage: Warden Tontiv. Home”. And a bottle marked "Vintage: Warden Gibbins. Don't frigging touch! I spit in this! I mean it!". That last one she had definitely not been proud of.

“Who goes there?” called the lookout, as they approached the heavy wooden doors in the wall, “Who wishes to gain entrance?”

 _A parcel of tired, broken, dirty elves,_ was her first instinct to call up. It would have been true.

“My name is Nesterin Lavellan. They call me the Herald of Andraste. I was known as Inquisitor Lavellan, for a time,” she shouted, wrinkling up her nose at how unnecessary the titles felt now.

The lookout turned and his silhouette marched out of view. After a few moments, she expected the gates to open, but they remained heavy and impenetrable and closed.

Another, different voice called from somewhere behind the wall, closer to them, though she couldn’t see the form it belonged to.

“Inquisitor Lavellan?”

A knot of fear curled in her stomach. Something in the way he said her name didn’t feel quite right.

“Yes. But _former_ Inquisitor is more accurate,” she stressed.

“The same Inquisitor Lavellan who took it upon herself to banish the Grey Wardens from Southern Thedas?”

Nesterin groaned. There went any hopes of a simple and easy request for information.

“The same, yes.”

“The same Inquisitor Lavellan who spread word to all corners of Thedas that Grey Wardens were mere puppets of Corypheus and, in so doing, damaged the memory of thousands of fallen heroes?”

"Yes."

"The same Inquisitor Lavellan who's actions at Adamant began a bitter power struggle amongst the Order. That remains unresolved to this day." 

“Mythal preserve us,” muttered Elandrin behind her weakly.

“I told you my situation with the Grey Wardens was complicated,” she hissed at him and called, “That would be me.”

As door began to open, Nesterin instinctively called up the available mana available to her, in case the situation turned ugly.

But then, the voice, on the other side of the door added, much more warmly:

“The same Inquisitor Lavellan who saved my life in the Fade?”

When the door was open fully, the Warden-Commander appeared to them, stood on the other side of the wall, armour gleaming, griffon insignia emblazoned on his chest. He smiled.

“And saved mine too,” added a gruff voice she knew very well.

“Titsicles!” Sera shrieked from behind Nesterin, rushing forwards as fast as if she were fade-stepping and Rainier laughed, grabbing at Sera and pulling her into a hug.

Nesterin had never seen him in uniform before. At the exalted council he had eschewed the blue and silver in favour of his usual thick coats. He’d seemed happy, he had- but he also hadn’t worn the uniform and she’d wondered why. Here, she hovered nervously and tried to work out whether or not it suited him.

Rainier pulled away from Sera just enough to get a good look at her. In return, she took in the strands of grey running through his beard and fretted that he looked older, that he looked tired, that he looked a little thin.

“Thom,” she said and tried to sound warm. She didn’t do all that well at it.

“You come here too,” he growled, pulling Nesterin into his embrace next to Sera.

Sera wriggled and poked at them with her elbows, Thom smelled of smoke and sweat and squeezed both of them.

“Little, brittle elves,” he said in a voice so warm that Nesterin wanted to cry, before he released them.  

Nesterin turned her attention to Alistair next, tugging down her shirt so she could appear a little more professional. Behind her, Sera and Blackwall had already descended into their usual profane topics of conversation, ruining the effect slightly.

“Looking good broody beard. Seen much taint since you’ve been here? Heh...get it? Because taint means blight but it also means-”

“Sera.”

Nesterin suppressed a slight smile and a large wince.

“That was a bit of a cruel trick, Ser,” she confessed to Alistair. “I thought I was going to have to take down this whole outpost with nothing but four hungry elves in dire need of a wash.”

Alistair laughed. “I imagine we’ve both taken on a lot bigger with a heck of a lot less. But we can do something about the hungry...maybe not about the wash, judging by the state of us here too. Tell me, do you like cheese, Inquisitor?”

“Just Lavellan, please.”

“Lavellanplees? I’m not familiar. Is that a Dalish cheese?”

“No, that’s my name, I’m Lavell...oh, and you were joking-” she sighed, pinching her temple. She probably should eat something sometime soon. But first, there was something pressing to address:

“Warden- Commander?”

“Yes?”

“Not that I’m not happy to see you here and in good health, but you’re a long way from Weisshaupt. Tell me, what is one of the most senior members of the Grey Wardens doing in a nowhere outpost in the Free Marches?”

Both Alistair and Blackwall turned her, looking a lot more serious now.

“I imagine the same reason that the Herald of Andraste is,” said Alistair gravely. “You and I are probably going to need to have a talk.”


	43. Of Kings and Mountains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for brief references to incest.

At the top of the wall, they watched the dark fog roll in from farther up the mountains. Shadowy silhouettes of sharpened rocks loomed high and distant, out and away from them as far as Nesterin could see. It made her miss Skyhold quite desperately. Made her long for the view from the ramparts and her balcony; of the white tipped rocks, catching the light of morning or eventide. A palette of shifting colours spread out across a blank canvas for her to write upon.

And what, she thought, had she written on that canvas? What was written on these mountains too? Standing next to Alistair made her feel, heavily and sharply, the ghost of Hawke. One life given in exchange for the other. And she felt the bones of the Hero of Ferelden, interred in the Anderfels. A dead elf buried by humans. Next to Garahel. Another dead elf buried by humans.

“What was she like?” Nesterin had once ventured to ask Leliana. In the early days of the Inquisition, people kept telling Nesterin about her, kept comparing the two- as, naturally, the humans would of two elves _not like the others._

“The warden was...a scrapper,” said Leliana, smiling slightly at the memory. “With a thick Denerim accent, absolutely no regard for authority and a talent for locks that even a bard could admire. She always found a way to laugh, she trusted her own instincts and she was very _very_ brave.”

After hearing her origins, Nesterin often pictured the Warden in a bloody wedding dress as opposed to uniform. Fresh red blood on a white dress, on a limp body underneath the twisted draconic shape of an old god.

“Hers’ was the noblest of all sacrifices,” they all said. Like it was the expectation.

Oh the _gall_ of Nesterin for surviving her story.

But she knew that it _would_ have been a better thing. To have died at the end.

She’d made the mistake of asking Alistair about the Warden once too. As they travelled to Adamant, Hawke always brought up Anders first, first and then often- dropping his dead lover into conversation the way a blood mage might draw power from a series of self-inflicted wounds- but everything about Alistair suggested he was tired of talking about his history, and of imagining up shadowy imitations of a woman for silly Dalish girls to try and find themselves inside of.

“Oh, long dead now,” he’d dismissed, dimly. “More story and song than person at this point. But we usually come out of it well. I know I tend to sound much smoother than I really was. So I suppose I shouldn’t complain. That much.”

A laugh to hide a buried sorrow, solidified into stone.

It really was a better thing to have died.

A legacy was a thing to be left. Not to stand inside of, surrounded by it, watching the chaos and the slow decline, and despair.  Threads of sorrow and regret and loneliness pulled at her heart and kept her longing for Solas, far stronger now than threads of happiness and the brief, _brief_ burst of life in their love.

“By rights, I should still be in the Anderfels,” Alistair told her. “Fighting it out amongst different factions and getting into endless bloody shouting matches. I’m actually almost pleased this came up instead.”

“What came up?”

“Since Corypheus, I’ve taken a rather dim view of Grey Wardens up and disappearing. Callings or false callings, neither outcome tends to- ah- go that well for us.”

Two wardens came up to the wall with glasses and a bottle. Nesterin winced. She forced herself to look out at the landscape. There were structures in the distance, Grey Warden fortresses, mining outposts and ancient castles. Scars upon scars upon scars.

“It’s either a blight or blood magic, from my experience of things,” Nesterin agreed. “How many?”

“Forty so far. I'm supposed to be sworn to secrecy about our numbers but, I should tell you..even that amount is noticeable.”

He’d said it in jest earlier, but by gods and men he was right, she’d dealt a nasty blow to the Grey Wardens. Killing them, banishing them, ruining their reputation. Again, Mythal’s voice came to her across the ages. With the Inquisition gone, there was nothing left in this world that Nesterin had created and nurtured.

“Especially when a senior warden left too,” Alistair finished.

“Were all of your missing Grey Wardens elves by any chance?” she asked, with a sigh.

“Bang on target, Lavellan. Every last one.”

Nesterin massaged her temples, she looked over at the bottle. And back again to the mountains. Memories of Skyhold came to her, strangely dimmer than her dreams of Amaril. The colours of the rotunda seemed grey.  The shape of Solas seemed to shift. From shabby apostate to Fen’Harel in furs, to the scattered memories of a girl who drowned in a Well of Sorrows. But he was shouting and angry and desperate, she remembered that.

Oh, what did he say?

Stop wardens? Insane plan. Old Gods. Bizzare. Pre-empt the blight.

And she said:

“They won’t succeed, Solas. We’re going to stop them together.” Softly, all tenderness and offering up her open, bleeding heart.

In return he sighed, “Thank you. I’ve been on my own for so long...it’s difficult to get used to having the support of others.”

 _Others_. Like those friends he killed in cold blood…all of her hard-won confessions were still wrapped in mistranslations.

She remembered the next part clearly. She thought about his words often:

“Those fools and duty. Responsibility is not the same as expertise. Action is not inherently superior to inaction.”

If she could go back, like she had at Redcliffe, go back and erase the horrors of the last three...must have been nearly four by now, years, she might have rushed in and grabbed him by the shirts at this point.  

 _Don’t take responsibility for this world, my love,_ she would have urged. _You don’t understand it.  Don’t act, you don’t need to. Just stay. Stay still, stay close and let me love you._

Solas hated the Grey Wardens. Hated Tranquility. Hated rash actions. Hated limiting freedom. Hated the Dalish. In the end, in some fashion or other, he got in to bed with all of them. _Why?_

“We managed to track them here,” Alistair continued. “Wanted to find out what was drawing them to the mountains. And possibly prepare for an onslaught of Darkspawn. Do you know what we found?”

Fear had a sharp flare singing out in Nesterin’s stomach.

“I don’t,” she admitted.

“Nothing.”

The fear fell away into a heavy, empty feeling as Nesterin’s shoulders slumped.

“No, you don’t understand,” Alistair went on, reading her expression. “ _Nothing_ . There should be darkspawn. Not many...a few handfuls making up the welcome wagon maybe,  but these are not supposed to be _safe_ mountains. We also found a mining company, completely abandoned. No sign of the dwarves who ran it, no sign of our missing wardens, or wyverns or bears or birds or bugs. No sign of anything.” he pulled a face and then added, “Alive.”

“Did you mean to say _alive_ in a way that was completely chilling, Warden Commander?”

Alistair poured himself a drink and Nesterin watched, putting a delicate hand over the top of her own glass and feeling seconds away from screaming.

“This is completely and totally not my area. I have to think about the Grey Wardens and the present. But your old companion, Rainier, suggested that you have a talent for looking backwards.”

Nesterin let out a small, bitter laugh and looked down at the stones on the wall.

“Thank you, Ser. It’s probably just my face.”

“No... That came out wrong and, _oh_ , you were making a joke,” said Alistair flatly. “Thom Rainier said you know how to read and speak in elvish fluently. Do you think you might be able to look at a few things for me? It might help both of us figure out what’s been going on up in these mountains.”

* * *

“Got a collection here that dates back centuries,” Blackwall- _Rainier,_ explained.

Nesterin couldn’t see how, or where. The outpost had a training yard, a mess hall, a blocky garrett for the Grey Warden’s to sleep in and a stable for the horses that also served as a smith. It didn’t seem the place to hold a particularly extensive library or archive. She followed Rainier into a narrow stone corridor running through the far side of the great wall.

Watching his back, in the glow of the fires, Nesterin chewed her lip, trying to forget an aching in her heart.

 _Are you happy here, Thom Rainier? Or content at least? Do you feel a sense of purpose? Do you feel you’ve earned forgiveness?_ She wanted to ask. _Did I do the right thing?_

In some ways, after all this time, she felt more responsible for him, more closely bound to him than every one of her old companions, even Cassandra, even Solas. The profound effect, she imagined, of saving a life so intentionally, after so much deliberation and so directly.

He took her to a small room. An armory, she saw, from the piles of blue jerkins and the swords and axes hanging on the wall. The Warden’s equipment was ordered neatly, the weapons arranged by size and class speciality, but at the centre, the armory was in chaos.

Scattered here and there, carelessly piled into clumps, Nesterin saw large stone slabs, dusty jars, stacks of papers and carved marble boxes. The largest of these boxes came in the form of three haphazardly placed white rectangles. They drew the eye immediately.

“Bloody ma ghilana. _What_? What are those?” she asked Rainier in a low voice, thick with disgust.

But several voices from The Well of Sorrows were already chiming in:

 _A safe place for the bodies of the dreamers to rest_ . _These ones had not yet reached perfection:  the state where one can draw energy from the fade and does not need fleshly sustenance._

_Look here, at how the the stone lid slides away? It allows the slaves to pour honey and herbs into a dreamer’s lips._

_Do you see the carvings all along the sides? These were nobles. Not gods or kings, but certainly rich. And respected._

_Very respected, to be handled so roughly and piled into a Grey Warden’s  cupboard._

“They’re all dead. We checked,” Rainier informed her. Somehow thinking that was in any way something she wanted to hear. “Just leather and bone in boxes.”

“And what, the Grey Wardens decided to just _help themselves_ to their bodies and their things?” she asked sharply.

“We weren’t the first, we found an old raider’s pup tent near the mouth of one of the caves we found the bodies in. Seemed like some of the jewellery’s been stripped too.”

“Oh, well. That makes it much better.”

“No one else was using them,” Rainier shrugged. Eminently practical, as always. He’d taught her to trap rabbits. Snapping their necks like it was nothing.

 _I’ll remember that the next time I get the urge to go digging up your grandmother,_ Nesterin thought hotly.

He seemed so untroubled by the idea of pulling bodies from their graves that Nesterin couldn’t help but remember standing in the Summer Bazar of Val Royeaux. Of the crimes of men against helpless children. Following orders, following the coin. Had he looked so impassive when Callier’s children were crying?

“You should have given them to the Dalish. Or to city elves. Or...no…” she trailed off weakly.

Her bitter anger was a Dalish impulse. Romanticising things that she knew so damnably little about. Taking ownership of things that wanted nothing to do with her. The bodies in the boxes were slave owners, they were probably cruel to them. They would have stood and looked down at her and sneered:

_Shadows hiding in the forest. Diminished by time, diminished by slavery, diminished by a broken world. You are not one of The People. You have no more right to our bones than the shemlen._

“I suppose they wouldn’t want anything to do with us,” Nesterin said miserably. “I’ll read what’s written. I’ll see what I can find in it. But then this all gets packed off to the University of Orlais. At least there they can organise everything properly.”

At this point, the best she could offer a fallen race of people was alphabetization behind glass. Not a solution she’d run by Solas if they ever saw each other again.

* * *

 

There was nowhere else suitable in the Outpost, so Nesterin was forced to sit, cross legged, amongst the coffins of the dreamers while she read through the papers.

Rainier tried to leave her to it, but she bade him to stay. It had become such a habit, reading with a drink close at hand, that Nesterin worried she’d forget herself entirely and send out for something without a second thought. Alcohol was so close at hand now, so easy to get access to…

She’d simply have to concentrate on the words and on the papers.

These pages were not like the books she had found in the ruins of an ancient library, stumbling after a bread crumb trail left by Solas before she knew the truth. There had been magic and memory infused all through those words, that same dialogue between fade and physical echoing in every line. In these papers, the physical had won entirely and all she had were letters, once lost to time.

They had not all come from out of the tomb, she gathered, but had been scattered all across the mountain and then gathered together with little thought or care. From the top of the stack, she picked one, and pictured wading once more into the Well of Sorrows before reading aloud:

_“It is so hard to see the mighty beasts of war, trampling the dying and dead beneath their merciless feet. My dearest love, no longer by my side to speak words of comfort, to keep my spirit blade shining, to act as my shimmering shield. Gone. Gone. Gone. No living brother, sister or Mother to administer relief in the saddest moments in the history of our people. Gone. Gone. Gone. O, the despair. The horrors, the horrors of death. Truly it must be considered the most cruel and awful scourge which can befall a race of people. We go to the gods soon.”_

The words finished, she picked up another, written in a different hand:

_“The battle has been raging all day in the distance. I am unable to ascertain what has been gained. But the losses number their thousands. Every day a thousand more. I long for peace, I long for mercy. I miss my home.”_

And then another. This one had been shaking while they scrawled:

_“We must remember what we fight for. We must remember the duty to which we are bound...the pink mists of sprayed blood howls in the silence like a song I have forgotten. We have to keep the hope alive. We have to. I have to. The alternative is too horrifying to comprehend.”_

“Oh,” said Nesterin weakly, sighing as she pressed her fingertips to the pages. Grief from the Well of Sorrows for a lost people mingled with her own, almost over powering her, she felt tears come to her eyes and sucked in a breath sharply.  “For thousands of years, their words were lost...”

“Collecting letters again, Inq- sorry-Nesterin?” Rainier asked her.

“Always,” she murmured. “My Keeper told me that in these mountains what remained of the elvhen people were finally overwhelmed by Tevinter. These soldiers were guarding them. We followed the same code. _Dirth'ena Enasalin_ ,  Arcane warriors, existing in perfect harmony with the fade and the physical. Bound to serve and protect.”

“Hamina ’eth,” she whispered.

_Rest safely._

And stopped short of adding Lethallin.

 _I don’t mind. I’ll say it; I’ve been living inside of your head long enough. We_ _are_ _kin. No matter what anyone else says. I’d still take this broken world over no world if I wasn’t dead._

_Thank you, Amaril. That means more than you know._

She rifled through yet more letters of the dead, thinking of the soldiers on the Exalted Plains. Near the bottom, she found something that interested her. Words written on leathery paper and arranged into a shape.

“Oh. This one wrote a poem,” she said to Rainier with a small laugh.

 

_“Falling fitful into a world of night,_

_Beholding Faded glimpses of our past_

_Listless, drifting, a vagrant mind takes flight_

_To the endless skies and the waters vast._

_But where whispers come, I will surely go_

_Trapped within this nightmare’s indifferent jaw._

_I swim the stream where bloody waters flow_

_Find reality red in tooth and claw._

_And now, retreating, dreams do call me still,_

_To find new worlds, safe worlds, apart from this._

_Where strangest cruelty leaves no sudden chill_

_Where soft lipped women plant their loving kiss._

_How to remain, with all of my doubting?_

_So I endure, Last King of the mountain.”_

“Another soldier? Bit of a fluffy one. Soft lipped women? And calling himself the Last King. He must have thought a lot of himself,” Rainier commented drily. “Sounds a bit like Solas. Don’t you think?”

“No it doesn’t,” Nesterin said firmly. “It doesn’t sound like him at all”

When Rainier only gave her a sceptical look, she pointed at the paper.

“It’s nothing like his hand for one."

She thought of letters left for her at Emprise Du Lion and at Griffon Wing Keep. There was a pressure in the purpose of the way he wrote, beautiful- as befitted a painter- but not ostentatious enough to lose the true meaning that his lettering symbolised.  The words of the poem, however, were slanted and they were faint. Like a person loosing themselves. 

"And there’s too much structure to it," she added, unable to keep a wry smile from her lips. "He’d probably fret about how even poetry can become corrupted when it’s organized in such a way. And Solas would never call himself a King of anything. It’s a step down from Godhood but true Kings shouldn’t name themselves. Soldiers or servants with pretensions might, though.”

“There’s something on the back too,” Rainier pointed out.

Nesterin flipped it over.

_For the dreaming:_

_Fresh water Marjoram Felandaris Chamomile Honey On and on and on and on and on._

_Even the_ _idea_ _of perfection is lost. It will never return to us again. By moons and stars, by sun and skies, by all the other things lost to me forever.  I will never be free from this prison._ _Fuck it all._ _Fuck it all into the void._

“The voices in the well agree with us,” Nesterin murmured. “They tell me that he was most likely a slave, probably tending to those in Uthenera. The long sleep of the elvhen.”

“He didn’t like his job much.”

“His people were dying and he was stuck, bound to tend to those asleep and longing for better days. It must have been painful. More painful still, that he didn’t succeed….Hamina ’eth, to you too, friend.”

As she bid the dead man a good rest, Briala entered the room, saying:

“They’re serving dinner in the mess hall and you need to eat something.”

Like Nesterin, she stopped still when she saw the collection of tombs and papers, asking sharply: “What is this?”

“Ancient elves, dead in boxes.” said Nesterin. “They were dreamers.”

“And now they’ve just been tossed into a Grey Warden armory?” Briala looked at the boxes and she sighed, first impulse of a city elf. Sad submission against the righteous anger of the Dalish. “Come on, you need to eat.” City elves focused on the present when the Dalish got so lost in the past.

“I’ll be fine. The Warden Commander asked me to look through these.”

“You still need to eat. Or you’ll end up like these corpses. You’d be the first to admit that the light of the full moon would not see you reach perfection.”

The voices in the Well were impressed with Briala’s knowledge of the dreaming. It was by sniffing the wrist of the dreamer, they told her, that a slave would know if a dreamer had reached a perfect state, their essence at one with the fade, their body completely separate from their soul.

“Felassan taught you a lot.”

“He did. Willing me to open up my eyes and get a clue, I expect,” Briala said bitterly. “If he’d spoken a bit more plainly, I might have found a way to help him. Now come and eat. I’m not forcing tea through your lips to keep you going.”

“I like tea,” Nesterin shrugged.

It reminded her of Deshanna’s little clay teapots and sitting on a reed mat with her keeper. It reminded her of the long night when Gregory Dedrick died and she stayed up late with Solas, talking and talking. It reminded her of his funny faces of disgust and the cook’s complaints about the hedge mage’s weird and fastidious requirements of the kitchen staff.

_Fresh water Marjoram Felandaris Chamomile Honey on and on and on and on and on..._

Poor Solas, lost in an argument between physical desire and the fade, just as Mythal had warned him. In all that time, he must not have reached perfection. He would never have kissed her and touched her and joined with her so hungrily if he had.

 _But then who,_ Amaril asked her, at the same time she thought it, _was keeping the Dread Wolf alive?_  

* * *

She was poor company at dinner. Nesterin knew it. She had little appetite for conversation and even less for the food. Rainier admitted that Grey Warden meals were designed to fill the stomach with as little effort or expense as possible. During expeditions they’d get to hunt for meat, but time in the barracks meant thick gruel, mountains of boiled potatoes, stewed cabbage, blood sausage, cottage cheese and heavy, yeasty beer.

They didn’t even serve water with dinner. Every one of her friends watched her closely when they poured the drinks. She swallowed down a thick mouthful of potato with nothing to wash it down and then gave up on the endeavour completely.

She watched Rainier chat with Sera and Briala. Watched Elandrin stare at his plate, but not really look at it. And she watched Revekah the closest of all. Chewing messily with a mouth full of blood sausage.

After dinner, Alastair informed them that they were trying to make room for them to sleep in a little garrett and Nesterin waited patiently for the perfect moment, shaking off the rest of her companions and going straight for Revekah.

“We need to talk,” she said sharply.

Revekah narrowed her eyes. Something about her seemed unsure of how she should respond. Arriving at the Grey Wardens had sort of muddied the waters of Revekah’s status as prisoner or bargaining tool or frosty companion. That was Nesterin’s fault. She didn’t quite know how to explain the situation, or whether Revekah and Elandrin belonged in a cell or with the rest of them.

Trusting an abomination and an agent of Fen’Harel would likely go horribly wrong, of course. Or...Nesterin could hope for the best from both of them.

“Suck a dick,” Revekah told her in elvish.

Nesterin sighed and grabbed the other woman by the collar of her tunics, pulling her out of the hall towards the training yard.

Revekah didn’t struggle, though she easily could have done. If anything, she looked slightly tickled by Nesterin’s roughness.

The grass in the square training yard had been kicked up by heavy boots and had turned yellow and dead, though a few weeds still grew up around the corners of the wall. Battered training dummies had been stuck into the ground, alongside a few archery targets. Nesterin dragged Revekah firmly to a fairly secluded corner, behind the stables.

Turning to face her, Revekah was grinning cruelly from ear to ear, flashing her little sharp teeth. Nesterin shoved the scrap of paper holding the recipe for the tea into her chest.

Revekah picked it up, her eyes looking over the recipe. She laughed. And then she flipped it over, scanning the poem. The smile dropped from her face.

 _So she can read it. Good to know_ , whispered Amaril. 

“So you can read it. Good to know,” said Nesterin.

“Where from did you find this?” Revekah asked her in her usual broken elvish.

“Here,” said Nesterin, responding in the same language. “There are three dead elves in boxes in the armory. Dreamers. Do you know them?”

Revekah laughed.

“I don’t know long dead people. Stupid,” she shrugged.

 _But she grew up in these mountains_ , Amaril reminded her.

“But you grew up in these mountains," said Nesterin. 

“I did. I have seen withered dreamers before.” Revekah sighed. “ No one left to tend to them so they die and were stolen. Even with spells and spirits, clever thieves always finding a way through.  The gold and fine things taken by Tevinter. Bones and brothers taken too. Bet they used to serve our body parts up for medicine in Minrathous. Dead elf dick for what ails you!”

Revekah let out another bark of laughter. Nesterin winced.

“You’ve known Solas your whole life. That’s what you told me.”

“I did,” said Revekah proudly.

“Was it a lie?”

“Yes and no.”  

The nasty flare of temper Nesterin had been nurturing during her alcohol withdrawal roared up again and she huffed, clenching her hand into a fist. Revekah step backwards a little, still grinning.

“Are you going to hurt me?” she asked, sounding pleased.

“No,” Nesterin gritted her teeth and growled. She breathed out and flexed her fingers, shutting her eyes momentarily so she didn’t have to look at Revekah’s mocking face. “No...no, I’m _trying_ to understand you.”

“You understand nothing. You do nothing. You _are_ nothing.”

“Fine,” Nesterin snapped. “You don’t have to say. I think I’ve guessed already. You’re Dalish. Well...not Dalish but essentially Dalish. Descendants from whatever person was tasked with tending Solas in Uthenera.”

Revekah laughed again and spat on the ground. But from behind them, a deep, rattling and sinister voice said:

“Panellas.”

Nesterin looked around to find Elandrin behind her, his eyes glowing with the light of corrupted Valour.

“You look like him,” it said. “I see it clearly now. Only...smaller and meaner and diminished to look upon.”

“Oooh, did you become a spirit of Flirtatiousness?” Revekah sneered.

“You are a descendant,” it repeated.

Revekah spat in his direction now. A gobbet hit the ground just beside Elandrin’s feet.

“Do not hide the truth from me, child,” said the spirit and the man in a low voice, stepping close to Revekah.  “Unlike this girl I will not hesitate to hurt you. It has been centuries since I knew anything of Valour. I assure you, I will not be merciful. If you do not give me what I want, your death will not be swift.”

Channelling mana into her spirit blade, Nesterin stepped in front of Revekah, holding her sword out to challenge him.

“You’ll have to go through me first,” she promised it.

“Like a knife through butter,” threatened the spirit.

But surely it wouldn’t dare? Not surrounded by Grey Wardens. It was a panicking little shit of a spirit who cared only for itself.

But it also knew it could beat her. And there was nothing worse, Nesterin reminded herself, than the cruelty and violence born out of fear and cowardice.  

It must have been a great warrior once. One that was now willing to fight dirty. Nesterin braced herself for the threat of the first blow.

Behind her, Revekah laughed. “Little broken soldiers playing at brave. What do you want from me, spirit?”

“I want to know what happened to Panellas,” it said. Sounding more like the Valour of Amaril’s memory. “You must tell me what became of my friend.”

It trembled. Just as Nesterin would have done. Were it Rainier, or Cassandra or Sera or the Iron Bull or any of her friends and companions.

“You want to hurt me? Fine. I can wield the truth like a dagger and hurt you back,” Revekah warned the spirit.  

_“Tell me.”_

Revekah took a breath and began,“Nothing went the way it was supposed to. The Dread Wolf  was fucked. You already knew that.”

“I did,” Valour agreed.

“How,” Nesterin demanded. The two of them turned to her, as if they had only half remembered she was there.

“Almost every last ounce of power he had inside of him is all around us, channelled into the veil” Revekah said, rolling her eyes. “Panellas and Felassan had to move him, basically dead, into the mountain. I guess this broken thing was already long gone. Some _friend_ ,” she spat.

“It wasn’t the plan,” snarled Valour. “But we were never privy to the _whole_ plan.”

“I would not trust you to wipe my arsehole, let alone save a race of people. Why would Fen'Harel?” asked Revekah.

And Nesterin thought:

_Dammit Solas, be honest with somebody. Open up properly to someone. Just once. It doesn’t have to be me. It just has to happen._

“Something about these mountains makes Uthenera easier, does it not?”Revekah said to Valour.

“The path for dreamers is clearer. Like taking the Imperial Highway instead of the rocky coastal passes. The Dread Wolf must have been severely weakened to be forced to pursue such...banality”

“He didn’t even really dream for the first thousand years,” Revekah confessed. “Lost in a loosely shaped darkness.”

“Sensible. He would have found few friends in the Fade whilst the memories of our final stand were so raw. I know Taranehn’s body was still fresh, I saw him cut her down with my own eyes. But what of Panellas and Felassan?”

“Ah,” Revekah laughed softly and looked at her feet. “They were basically dead themselves by this point too. But since Panellas was the least dead, he agreed to take on the task of watching over Fen’Harel. Like a good friend.  Just until they could regroup and regather the people they trusted. “

She snorted and continued:

“Regroup and regather? Hard to do that when the world was burning. And well, Panellas figured he’d sit tight and wait for the chaos to be over. Immortal being and all that. What’s two hundred years? Four hundred? Five hundred? He took up sculpting. Wrote thousands and thousands of his shitty little rhymes, scattered up and down the Vimmarks.

But...you know, blights...and humans and just general...bad stuff. And a _thousand_ years. And darkness and no one to talk to, hearing the sounds of the violent decline of a people. He decided to do something about it…..”

“Which was?” Nesterin asked, warily. She couldn’t take another old elf trying to destroy her world.

“Panellas had gone quite crazy by this point, mind. Crazy people do not make the best plans.”

“His plan, Revekah?” insisted Valour.

Revekah drew her head up, face twisting up. She wasn’t laughing or smiling now.

“Maintain our immortality, of course. Maintain a pure line of elvhen, deep inside a mountain. And here I am. The dying, diminished, depraved result of a madman’s millenia of inbreeding." 


	44. After the push...

****Nesterin felt sick. Truly and physically sick to her stomach. Revekah looked over at her and apparently drew some kind of strength from Nesterin’s look of horror, as she continued grimly:

“We all died of course. Each generation lived shorter lives than the last. That just made him crazier. We’re useless shadows. We aren’t proper elves. We feel weird. We disgust him, rah, rah, rah on and on and on every day.”

Nesterin had seen Panellas in the Well of Sorrows.  Just as she had seen Taranehn, the woman who betrayed, and Valour who broke, and Felassan who lost his soul. Panellas had been young and freckled and laughing and slapping his leg.

And now she pictured a beast in the dark. Cruel and mad and twisted. Nails like claws. Bulging eyes. Skin almost translucent, gnashing his teeth. In her imagination, only the uncanny aspect of Panellas’ personhood remained. The regal face of an elvhen, warped and twisted by madness and time.  Too like a monster to be saved, too like a person for someone not to see his fall so clearly written on his face.

“Also we were so fucking inbred that most of us were monsters from day one. Those ones, he dashed their brains on the stone and...you don’t want to know,” Revekah shook her head. The fact that Revekah, gleefully crude Revekah, pulled back and declined to speak might have been more horrific a thought than anything else that had come before.

Nesterin bunched her hand. She flexed her fingers and moved forwards to touch Revekah’s arm reassuringly. But Revekah batted it away and rolled her eyes, continuing,

“I mean, he diversified a bit. Had to because that sort of carry on tends to lead to infertility. King under the mountains,” she sniffed. “With his twisted up children. And his statues.”

“So Panellas lived? In our time? He still lived?” Nesterin asked heavily. “You _knew_ him?”

“Course I knew him. I knew every inch of him,” she said, spitting on the ground again. “He was awake for a long, long, long, long time as everyone else either slumbered or died. He was probably a bit grouchy about that,” she let out a savage bark of laughter.

“But there must have been thousands of you? Just living under the ground?”

“No,” said Revekah. “Nowhere near as many. Towards the end. There were plenty of runaways. Maybe some got out.  Smart ones who got out by going up, idiots who got out by going further down. Any money one of my sisters was the first of the broodmothers, seized by darkspawn, spitting out shrieks deep, deep below the mountains.”

Nesterin only knew horrifying stories of the broodmothers. Women and girls, force fed darkspawn flesh and vomit, corrupted and corrupted until they became the monsters who gave birth to monsters. She had long ago sorted them alongside the terrible fate of her her mother, she sorted them alongside Mythal and Flemeth and Andraste. Their crime was a strange magic that belonged to life and beginnings, their punishment was desperate cruelty from a world that always favoured death and decline.

“Also, after one of my brothers managed to blind him in one eye, he got a bit more... _murdery_ with us if we didn't play nicely. I’d put us at a hundred, same size as one of your Dalish clans,” Revekah finished.

Nesterin was never ever going to complain about Deshanna again. Then she winced and she asked:

“So Solas wakes up and the first thing he sees is...”

“An underground incest pit created by the mad remnants of one of his best friends? Correct.”

Behind her, Valour swore and Nesterin blinked. She felt her teeth find their way towards her bottom lip and she bit down on it. Hard. Wanting to taste blood for a reason she couldn’t quite explain.

“He put Panellas down like the mad dog that he is. _Squish_ ,” said Revekah, drawing her thumb across her throat just as she had done around the campfire.

Nesterin had not wanted to know then, she did not want to know now. Pushing down into the wounds of the past seemed to bring up more and more blood. An _ocean_ of blood. And a mess of shattered bones, ragged flesh and tangles of sinew. Tales of bloody battles, of cruel mages gone mad with power, of sacrifice, slavery, incest, ruin, corruption. It was now almost impossible to see the form of the thing-that-was, before the wound.

History books were easy. Black words on white paper, drawing together dates with a clear perspective, assembling motives, patterns and reason from destruction. Paintings  too were clean. And they were an act of hope. Putting form to formless horror, finding the aesthetic merit of a murdered empress, a bitter rebellion, a lost temple. She could see why people preferred them over going wading around in the disgusting complexity of viscera.

“He gave us a choice,” said Revekah. “The first choice any of us ever had in our lives. We’re free to go wherever we want, or...he wants to study the veil and the memories in the fade and understand the nature of this waking nightmare that he’s created.”

For the first time, Nesterin felt guilty. For sticking her hand into Solas’ innards and scrambling around clumsily inside. In a hastily assembled field hospital, such a thing might be necessary for a practised healer, but Nesterin didn’t know what she was _doing_. She only had one hand. And she was barely managing to keep her own innards from spilling out into the dirt....

“I _think_ he was looking for reassurance that everything wasn’t all totally fucked for forever,” Revekah theorised.  “Safe to say he did not find it. Two of my brothers gave the orb to the Venatori who passed it to Corypheus. So…” She looked at Nesterin’s arm and she grinned a little. “Sorry about that…”

The severed bone just below Nesterin’s elbow ached slightly. Sighing out for the missing pieces. And Nesterin had long tired herself out of anger. All she had left was the heavy, awkward, empty reality of it. She was the idiot who always went for the glowing green ball of light at the centre. And she lost pieces and pieces and pieces of herself for it.

“I don’t believe you,” snarled Valour, three steps behind Nesterin’s deep depression and just about rounding into denial.

“I said the truth would hurt you,” Revekah pointed out.

“Panellas was a brave and valiant soldier.”

It would have been easier to pity Valour if the tremble in his voice didn’t come from the sound of a death rattle blowing through the possessed body of Elandrin.

Revekah obviously felt the same way, saying, “I mean. Its like you said. _Elgar din’an._ I’m sure- if he hadn’t gone mad- Panellas would have said that you weren’t the sort of spirit who grooms little boys and girls, gets all up in their souls and then poisons them from the inside out…”

Valour snarled and stepped forwards, Revekah didn’t draw back, facing him down with a nonchalant sort of shrug.

“Tell yourself he got blighted if it makes you feel any better. Tell yourself he was broken by a broken world. Tell yourself that nothing that happened after the veil is even real.”

It stung and Revekah turned sharply and Nesterin knew she should just let her go. But then Nesterin grabbed onto her arm to hold her back, and said:

“One more thing. Please. The veil weakening. It was me. Wasn’t it?”

“You and your Inquisition, yes,” Revekah conceded with a grin.

“It was supposed to strengthen the veil,” said Nesterin weakly.

“It strengthened Fen’Harel’s _connection_ to the veil. It was always his, afterall.”

“So he’s been….”

“Slurping power out of it like soup for the last two years? Yes,” Revekah confessed and something in Nesterin's stomach sank like a stone. 

* * *

As Revekah left them, Nesterin feeling her words too sharply, her mind played mean tricks and brought her happy memories. The smell of paint, the curve of his mouth, her hand in his. She thought of a morning, and how the light from the tower cast shapes across the floor of the rotunda when she went to him. The Dread Wolf might have tea and sugared buns for breakfast but Nesterin always ended up consuming a pile of paperwork.

As he read a letter she’d asked him to take a look at, about investigating an ancient laboratory in the Western Approach, a book on the desk caught her eye. It was a slim volume, coloured in powerded blue. She tilted her head slightly to read the gold lettering:

“ _Songs of guile and the guileless_?

“A poetry collection. Cassandra’s recommendation,” he said, and then indicated at the letter. “If you wish to have my opinion, I would suggest letting Leliana’s agents handle it.”

“I think I’m more inclined to go with Josephine’s recommendation. About sending in the Chantry scholars.”

“Leliana’s agents will be swifter,” Solas pointed out. “They’ll be prepared for traps. And not subject to censorship or the ulterior motives of the Chantry.”

“True. But I think I trust the scholars with artifacts more than the spies. They made a mess of my glyphs the last time.”

“And you could always use more Chantry goodwill in reserve.”

“They _are_ always looking for a reason to get offended and cut me loose,” she sighed.

“Not over something so simple as a pile of ruins. But the Chantry scholars would come with enjoyable side benefits,” he agreed smiling a little before folding the letter and handing it back to her. “I can see the appeal of taking the opportunity to solidify your position, Inquisitor.”

“Then I’ve decided. I’ll let Josephine know, thank you,” she said, leaning in to kiss him swiftly on the corner of his mouth. She’d been away at Griffon Wing Keep and she’d missed the little upturn of his lips. He stiffened. She barely noticed it at the time. But she was sure of it now. Stiffened and looked pained. Over a simple kiss.

Was it that she’d disagreed with him? Or was it the domesticity of it that disgusted the Dread Wolf so?

“But. Now,” Nesterin continued, waving the book at him, still young and happy, covered up safely with Elgar’nan’s mark and not yet broken. “Most importantly, you asked _Cassandra_ about poetry? And she didn’t hit you with something? I desperately need you to tell me if its filthy.”

“It’s... highly idealised,” Solas said, choosing his words carefully, with a small wry smile. “And technically banned. It’s easy to imagine how the Seeker might find comfort in it.”

 _“Take flight my wandering hands, that softly go/ Over and under, above and below…_ oh no, no,  this isn’t for me. Where’s all the suffering?” Nesterin murmured, reading from one of the pages. “All this time... I assumed you were boning up on history and spellwork like me and Dorian. But I find you reading sexy poetry. This desk is nothing but fiction, Solas.”

“Fiction bleeds into your textbooks too,” he argued smoothly. “The fade shows me what I need of history and spellwork. It’s lessons are more practical and come, for the most part, with less agenda and restrictions.”

“Ever the hedge mage,” said Nesterin and she had loved him for it. Had loved every single wretched part of his lie. “I thought the fade showed you emotion and perspective too?”

“It can. Where spirits form and memories shift. But now so few people can manipulate the fade or a memory at will. And I find it fascinating to read people’s choices. Which emotions they imperfectly attempt to recreate and commit to. One man’s monument to a moment, captured for an age. Perhaps you could say it was like a spirit…only…”

“Sexy?” Nesterin supplied.

“Yes,” he chuckled with a bit of a snort. “Sometimes.”

And in the present, Nesterin thought about all those piles of poetry. Recommended by Cassandra. And he’d read Varric’s book. More than one of his books. And books of legend and published journals. And the truly dreadful Noladar Anthology of Dwarven Poetry.

History failed him. The fade failed him. The waking world failed him. But he still searched for their souls at Skyhold.

Not that finding them mattered now. He’d told her as much in the Crossroads. Their souls didn’t matter. Her love didn’t matter. He’d already got all he needed out of her and then he’d put them all coldly aside. There were too many wounds and there was already too much blood.

* * *

“How could Panellas lose his mind and go to such places? As mad with his meagre slice of power over his progeny and as depraved as those we gave up everything to rebel against?” said Valour, furiously.

It looked up, through Elandrin’s eyes, and towards the stars. This high up and they could see, through the fog, swirling colours in the night. Stars pooled across streaks of light blue in the blackness, like frothing waves against the coast. Nesterin thought about Revekah, her siblings and Panellas living under a mountain, with nothing but shadows cast by the glow of firelight. She knew so little of life in the Deep Roads; Nesterin only knew surface dwarves, and Varric tended to speak fondly of the sun of his face. She wondered what it must be like to step outside for the first time and see the stars. It could go either way, just like stepping through the fade. The night would come to look either beautiful or terrifying.

“Thousands of years in the darkness…I don’t know how much better I’d fare,” Nesterin confessed to the spirit.

“I spent thousands of years here too. Yet I have _somehow_ refrained from acts of mass homicide and fleshly depravity.”

Nesterin couldn’t help herself. She let out a bitter blast of laughter.

“You have something to say?” asked Valour sharply. “Show courage and speak it.”

Whirling around, Nesterin asked, “Do you _honestly_ think you’re better? Really and truly?”

It had no expression, of course, only the mask of Elandrin’s face and Nesterin worried for him. She knew what it was liked to be trapped inside the dreams of Amaril, unable to talk or to move, barely able to even comprehend her own thoughts. And the longer and stronger the time spent away from herself, the harder it was to find her way back.

“You only hurt and used and ruined one person at a time over the last couple of thousand years. Opposed to hundreds for Panellas and...I dread to think how many for Solas. Aren’t you a hero?” she snapped.  “You’re _are_ as bad as them. In some ways you’re worse. The mean little worm of a spirit who lacks the drive and ambition to fuck up my world on a larger scale. Who targets _children_ instead.”

Nesterin gritted her teeth and shut her eyes tight, saying in a strained voice, “You know, _fuck,_ at least Fen’Harel sometimes has the decency to make it look difficult.”

And she knew she was crying when a little bead of water rolled down her cheek.

“I am not the one you’re angry with,” she heard Valour rattle beside her.

“Yes you are,” Nesterin hissed, savagely swiping away her tear. “You are very much the one I’m angry with right now. Get out of Elandrin. He’s not your meat shield. He’s a person. Just like the people you promised to protect.”

“I don’t owe the people anything. If anything they owe _me_. I did my duty.”

Nesterin rolled her eyes, “Then kindly fuck off back to the fade, Valour. If you think you’re done…”

So often Nesterin wished _she_ could do the same. Finish, finally, and find a place in the University of Orlais, a bed at Cullen’s sanctuary, a corner in a bar at the bottom of a wine bottle,  a place amongst the voices in the well, a dark spot under a freshly planted sapling, somewhere near her mother….

 _You don’t want that,_ Amaril trembled in her head. _Whatever you think of living, I assure you death is much worse._

“And I didn’t deserve a taste?” Valour went on stupidly. “A taste of glory or gratitude or love?”

“You got _all_ the tastes,” Nesterin huffed. “There’s a girl in my head who remembers how brave you made her feel. Why can’t you be happy with the memories? Why can’t that be enough?”

Valour must have seen her hand tighten into a fist and the way her knuckles turned white, because it took a breath and then it said:

“I still say we would make a good match, you and I. Just let me in. Our time is over, our light has died, but there is hope for Laisa and Elandrin yet. If you only let me in.”

“No,” Nesterin growled. “You _can_ change, Valour. You can. Do it for Elandrin. I know you must have come to care about him. You must have cared about every one of the people you corrupted. Be better for Elandrin and I’ll be better for Laisa.”

She pleaded with the spirit, but couldn’t see anything beyond the raw power crackling in its eyes. Nesterin took a breath and then added,

“I know a spirit of compassion. A dear friend.  Like you, he was caught between here and the fade. He didn’t know his place in the world either. And he was in so much _pain_. But he embraced who he was and he forgave the world for hurting him. He helped instead and he was happy.”

“And where is your friend now?” asked Valour.

“I don’t know…somewhere, out there, helping.”

“Helping and hurting and on his way to breaking again, I’m sure,” said Valour bitterly. “ If he truly is a spirit of compassion, he will not last long. Not in this time. Not in this place….Or any time. Or any place.”

“No. No, Cole won’t break ever again,” she insisted.

But, oh, the words were like ice. Truly, if the worst should come to pass, if the world should stand on the brink of burning then Cole could so easily shatter and break into a million pieces. Lovely, strange, sometimes truly scary Cole who found his way into people’s heads and hearts.

Perhaps if she’d let him be a boy...it would have been better. He wouldn’t have had to feel so much of the hurt...

“Because _you_ fixed him? Like you fixed the world, Nesterin Lavellan?” asked Valour.

“I tried to help."

“You put a loose bandage over a festering wound and now you’re surprised it has started to peel? You’re surprised to find that underneath the rot is worse than ever?”

Valour laughed. It felt horrible.

“The Inquisition is gone,” it went on. “Briala is no longer Marquise of the Dales, the veil is weaker than you have ever seen it, your people are still hated and they hate you in return, because of your drinking your friends no longer respect you and now the man you love the most rises in the place of your vanquished enemy.”

It cut into the very heart of her. Feeding on her fears. Fuck, what if she was making Valour _worse?_ What if the spirit was seeing her and feeling her and slowly shifting into a nightmare?

“It’s always easier to slide backwards...that’s why we have to keep moving forwards. That’s why we change. That’s why we grow…” she said, so flimsily, wanting to believe in her words and falling so far short of conviction.

“I don’t _want_ to change. What would happen if I were Valour now? If I had to hear what had become of my friends? If I had to witness their madness and their cruelty and their suffering and their sorrow? I’d be breaking all over again.”

“Leave me alone,” said Nesterin flatly. She was _so_ tired and all she wanted was a drink.

“Let me in.”

“No. Never,” she said weakly. “You think you’re the first spirit to tempt me? I can’t give up, I can’t surrender, I can’t submit.”

She whispered it like a prayer, but meant none of the words. A nothing prayer to nothing on high that was worth nothing. And she was sure that if it came on her now, she wouldn’t be able to do much to stop it….

And that’s when she heard, behind her, a gruff voice asking:

“Everything alright here, My Lady?”

Nesterin twirled around and saw Rainier, looking firm and stern and staring at the spirit and Elandrin. What was once Valour took in Thom, took in his armour, his sloping shoulders, his great chest and his sword and went scampering away inside of Elandrin like the nasty little coward that it was.

Elandrin blinked and trembled and he staggered slightly sideways. Nesterin stepped towards him, but he too looked panicked at Rainier and whispered,

“ _I'm sorry_ ,” before fleeing the scene.

Blackwall crossed his arms and watched Elandrin retreat. 

“Sera said you’d picked up an abomination," he said gruffly. "And a mad woman. And a Marquess. Maker’s Balls, Nesterin, you do know how to pick them.”

“It’s a talent,” Nesterin agreed. “I should go after him.”

“That thing hits harder and sharper than Cole ever did,” warned Blackwall. “It seems dangerous.”

“The spirit is quite a bit older than Cole. And yes, it is dangerous. But it wasn’t always like that. And Elandrin is a very good man. I want to save them. Both of them.”

Rainier chuckled slightly and scratched his beard, “That sounds about right.”

Nesterin knew she should go and comfort Elandrin but she wavered slightly, chewed on her lip and then ventured:

“I...I did the right thing didn’t I, Thom? By you. I didn’t...ruin your life?”

“Ruin my life?” he repeated, confounded. “Maker, why would you think that?”

She looked down at her feet, embarrassed. Embarrassed because it wasn’t particularly becoming to start publically walking back on her decisions. She still owed everyone, including the dead, the courage of her convictions. Embarrassed because she shouldn’t place any burden of her choice on Rainier’s shoulders. Embarrassed because he’d had to save her from what amounted to a nasty little shit of a spirit and because it was an insensitive thing to say, given that all he’d wanted when she’d judged him was to be dead.  

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I just…” she tried, and failed.

Thom uncrossed his arm and looked as if he wanted to reach out. But thought better of it. But then he rethought again and crooked one finger under her chin, gently drawing her head upwards.

“I didn’t have a life when I met you,” he told her solemnly. “I had bones and guilt and a lie about a promise. And you gave me a chance to make that promise true. If that’s not doing the right thing, I don’t know what is.”

Swiftly, Rainier pulled his hand away. The next of his words seemed more difficult when he confessed,

“You make people want to be better just by being around them.”

Nesterin tried to come up with a pithy comment and found that her wit had failed her, instead murmuring weakly. “Oh. That can’t possibly be true.”

“It is,” Rainier insisted. “I was there.  Watching you at the centre of a crowd, people falling over themselves to impress you. Watching you dolling out buckets of hope to the hopeless. So do me one small favour?”

“Yes, Thom?”

“Save some back for yourself, eh, My Lady?”

At that, Nesterin smiled, even if it was a little bit bitter and a little bit sad. Right now, hope in herself was too much of a thing to ask. But she still had so many of her friends. Friends who weren’t dead or broken or corrupted. Friends with beating hearts and beautiful, slightly battered souls. Friends and family, who were scattered across a ruined world, who were growing and living and finding a way forwards. In whatever way they could.

It was a spark. The power of friends. And, she thought heavily, there was power in losing friends too. Nesterin chewed on her lip and looked up at the swirling sky, feeling as if she were watching Hope and Despair, pushing and pulling, tugging and twisting, dancing together, like two lovers intertwined.


	45. A Dream of Amaril (7)

“Will is what fixes life into place. Will puts the structure into dreaming. Puts the structure into our lives. Even the pace with which we grow and learn and recognise time is a will. Will is what sustains us.”

The oldest of the children sit, legs stretched out in front of us, or folded into our bodies, by the lake. Now, looking back on it, I have to wonder whether the lake still persists in your time. Someone may have called it forth from the fade, the colours of it shift and shimmer in the sunlight, swirling with silvers and gold.

 _The temple was surrounded by dense forest when we came to it, but there was water. Brown and old and stinking with age,_ the body I inhabit recalls. I suppose the veil unpicked the gold threads woven through the tapestry of it, leaving what was left to unravel.

In my memory, one of Mythal’s mages is speaking to us. Her name is Imsa, she is dressed in dull coloured robes and her bearing has an other-worldly austerity to it, even to us. Her head is shaved, there is something dark, like ash, smeared across her eyes and she has marked herself for Mythal.

At the end of our days, she will distinguish herself as Mythal’s High Priestess- the machinations of the ambitious are the same in any age. It happens amongst servants just as it happens amongst great rulers, more- I would expect- when the fate of a house and not a nation is at stake and the threads and steps and stitches have to be so fine and so delicate.

Imsa will throw herself from the High Wall in the Hall of Shrines and I will see her clever brains, filled up with fade magic, spilling out onto the stones.

“Without will, all that remains is the unfulfilled intention,” Imsa goes on in her low monotonous voice.  

I’m not listening too closely at this point. But I will come to know the unfulfilled intention all too well. It is a part of life and a part of everything and yet a part of death and a part of nothing.  It is the seed that does not take root, the spirit that struggles to find a name, the spell that sputters and fails, the unconsummated union between nature and the idea.

When Mythal plucked at the ivy, to keep it from strangling the rest of the plants, it began to wither in her hand. When the first blood blossoms on my sheets it is nature and the fade and the inside of me announcing an intention that has not been fulfilled, life that has not found a shape or a place.

I am the unfulfilled intention too. A spark of smothered life that has been bent and bent and bent to the will of others for so long.

“A single person’s will is powerful. The will of a collective, manifest in a ritual, focused towards a singular shared goal, has more power in it still,” Imsa goes on.

Behind us, we hear a scoff and some of the children turn their heads.

“And how can a collective ever reach a _singular_ will?” he asks, leaning against a tree with his arms folded.

 _As he was in the Winter Palace,_ the body I inhabit thinks. _An unobtrusive outsider in the corner. Watching, listening, learning. The heady blend of power, intrigue, danger and sex. We danced, an Empress died, half-truths were spoken, a nation was changed and we made quiet love by moonlight on a single bed in a servant’s quarters._

It would be tempting to consider this shape- leaning, relaxed, outside of uniform and not swathed in shadows- as something close to a true approximation of the person. But the body I inhabit remains sceptical of such things.

“The individuals put themselves aside,” says Imsa primly, barely flickering her eyes over to him. “In favour of a higher ideal. And a will stronger than their own.”

“Who’s?” he asks. He’s smiling mildly, but his eyebrows begin to turn down. I catch the faintest curl of a sneer about his lips and his nose.

“The Will of life. The Will of the greater good. The Will of a greater power.”

“Ah, there it is,” says Solas, faintly. “It’s almost comforting to find that you’re still indoctrinating Mythal’s children into blind subservience. I suppose, Imsa, if you had your way we’d all be singing a song of stone.”

The High Priestess’ nostrils flare, but she coolly turns back to the children.

“The time is drawing closer for you all to cross out of your childhoods and into-”

“Don’t ignore me,” Solas presses her. “We’re in the middle of a discussion.”

“ _We_ are in the middle of nothing. I am in the middle of a lesson and you are shouting and looking for a fight, _child_ ” sniffs Imsa. “I would be happy to debate the finer points with you in private, but for now these children need to learn.”

“You mean these children need words putting into their mouths?” he demands. “Why not let them see that they’re allowed to ask questions? Why not show them that they _are_ allowed to disagree with you?”

“Says the soldier,” the Mage finally snaps. “Your whole way of life is order and instruction. What good is an army where every soldier wants something different?”

“As good an army as there ever was. A general must learn to speak with his soldiers in a common language, not to silence his followers and stamp his own words upon their lips.”

“And should these children wander onto the path that leads astray, I daresay you’ll be there to show them the best way to stick a pointy thing inside of a scary thing!” Imsa barks, and then collects herself. “But for now, let me teach them the nature of transcendence and the fade in peace.”

“Transcendence? You just told them they must always bow to the will of another!”

“That is how _life_ persists, Solas!” says Imsa, their voices are growing louder and louder with each moment. “Will rubs against will, and something either gives way or it leaves an unimaginable wound. Compromise or chaos.”

“And what happens to us when the same things must always give way?”

“It is a dialogue. There is always some give and take. Look to Mythal. See how she handles disputes. Equality in the eyes of justice does not mean equality of outcome.”

“It _is_ an argument!” Solas argues loudly. “Though it always serves the winners to pretend that there have been gains and losses on either side!”

“The unfulfilled intention is a necessary consequence of the glory of elvhen endeavour, great towers, the nexus which rewrite the laws of time and the stability of our people.That is the way of things here, that is the way of the fade.”  

“That is _not_  the way of the fade!”

_Well that certainly sounds like Solas…the bloody expert in every age._

Besides me, I hear Athim ask through gritted teeth, “Is this still part of the lesson?”

“I don’t know?” shrugs a young man near her.

“Well...I say we leave them to it, then” Athim announces, and stands up, shaking out her leg.

The mage lets out a strangled huff, and puts her hands on her waist,“A mere _inch_ of time has passed and yet the pupil returns and believes that he knows more than his teacher! You cannot possibly comprehend the work I have done that qualifies me to speak whilst you should remain _respectfully_ _silent!_ ”

By now, she has whirled around to face Solas, and does not notice when Athim walks away.

“Your credentials should come second to how you put your argument!” Solas returns.

“Any idiot may come out with fine words and empty rhetoric,” snaps Imsa. Some of the rest of the children begin to trail off nervously too. “I actually have the experience to bolster my arguments!”

I wonder if the fight is going to devolve into something violent. I’ve seen it before, when the architects fell out over the new design for the dinner hall. They wanted to have a duel, which pleased Valour, but everything got a little out of hand when they ended up pulling blades on one another right there in the hall. Mythal told them that we, the children, solve our disputes with more grace then they did.

“Yes but, is it not entirely possible that you have come to the _wrong_ conclusion? At best your experience amounts to nothing actionable! At worst it could be doing damage!” he returns hotly. “You forget that I have seen things too! Other perspectives and other ways of life! If you could only...” he catches himself sharply and shuts his mouth, looking away to the lake.

“And Mythal knows of this?” asks the mage, hissing quietly now. “Of how open you are becoming to _Other_ perspectives?”

Solas grits his teeth.

And then Imsa sighs, her anger dying as quickly as it flared. “You burn too hot, Solas. Be careful. For her sake if not for your own.”

“You be careful,” Solas returns petulantly. “For better or for worse the children will listen to you.”

Imsa looks up, remembering us. And turns around to find more than half of us gone, letting out a laugh and then a sigh.

“Only the bright ones,” she says heavily. “And they tend to disregard me. Go,” she says with a lazy flicker of her fingers to the children. “I’m sure there are many more interesting things for you all to be doing.”

What remains of the children begin to trail away. I do too, taking an idle journey up to the Summerhouse. And as I do, I look towards my left side, asking:

“How does it feel? Being the passenger?”

She blinks, surprised by her sudden corporeality in this place. She looks around her, her movements as sharp and as nervous as a little sparrow, as her eyes take in the lake, the trees and the Summerhouse at the top of the lawn.

In truth, the animal quality of her is quite striking in comparison to the people and the places in my memory. There is a strange, shifting deformity to the little shadowy shape. I hardly have the context to describe her physically-she moves too quickly, she changes swiftly and shudders in and out of focus- save for the feelings she pulls out of me. Pity and revulsion, mistrust and a primordial kind of hatred.

Yet, there is an uncanny likeness, scrambled up in strangeness, that unsettles me.

“This isn’t the Fade,” she says in a small voice. Barely more than a whisper from a Well of Sorrows.

“How do you know?”

A pained expression crosses over her partially formed features, she scrunches up her nose and waves her hand vaguely back towards Solas, speaking a few words more to Imsa before he leaves too.

We’re still completely connected, even if we look separate. I can feel the weight of her memories within memories, demons inside of dreams, love within love within hate. She listened and she let him reshape her whole world, let him fill up her days with questions and shifting perspectives, let him fill up her nights with new ways and possibilities. And then he snatched them all away.

“That’s how the Dalish stories about him always go,” she says grimly. “We always get punished for our hubris.”

She pushes it all down and crouches in the dirt, trying to fist a handful of grass.

“It’s a place. It exists, connected to the present and the past and we can dream in it,” she mutters. “But it doesn’t exist, it’s all dead people and it’s not connected to anything.”

She concentrates on the same patch of grass, and, slowly, like wax from a candle it seems to melt into itself.

Beneath the ground, we catch a glimpse of a swirling darkness. Deep and heavy and shifting.I hear the sound of water, sloshing against the side of something. It tugs at me and seems to draw me to it.

Now she has found a shape, the Inquisitor cannot help inquisiting. And this place does not care for it.

“It’s my past,” I insist, pushing her away with nothing but my mind so that the grass grows back, bright and green and beautiful. “You can’t know this because you’re stupid, but it’s actually considered quite rude to step into a reality someone else has made and to start pulling things apart at the seams.”

“There’s more to it than that,” she murmurs and narrows her sharp eyes. “We both know it. And why am I so _flimsy_? It’s like I’m falling in and out of myself.”  

“You have no will here. It’s all mine,” I tell her. To illustrate the fact, I look at her, will the heaviness into her bones and the solidity into her skin. She becomes more fixed into place, gritting her teeth and pulling back sharply.

“I don’t like that.”

“You’ve been doing it to me for years,” I point out. “Only you’ve been quieting me and pushing me down and trying to take my shape _away_.”

“And when I conceded an inch, you took it and you ran a mile. None of this feels particularly safe.”

“You have paid terrible prices for knowledge in the past,” I point out.

“Again, not the most comforting thing you could have said, Amaril,” she says. And looks thoroughly miserable at the thought of it.

I look at her and I know she feels like Corypheus. That ancient Darkspawn, once a man, who listened to the whispers of Old Gods and tried to touch the heavens. The price he paid for pride was to become broken and mad and corrupted. In the end, for all his knowledge and power, he was still little more than a pawn in someone else’s game.  

All this time, she thinks, perhaps she should have pitied him….or at least learned from his mistakes...

“I think this is the part where I go after him,” I say, looking at Solas. Feeling another tug inside of me, because it has already happened.

“I thought you’d say that,” she says with a hollow laugh. “There’s a story being told here, as a friend of mine would say. But neither of us are telling it, are we?”

I frown. I had not considered that.

I’ve enjoyed having a body so much that the meaning behind the memories hasn’t much occurred to me.

But these are not necessarily, I realise, the things that _I_ would want to see. Where is my mother? The place where I grew up before I was brought to the Summerhouse? Where are the games that I play with my friends? The alliances we form and promises we murmur to one another?  The petty squabbles between us that make us howl and feel despair for days? Where are the lessons I learned and the tugging desires in my heart? They might drift in and out to give shape and context to the moment but those memories stay- for the most part- outside of my reach.

Irrelevant to a larger narrative at play.

It’s like collecting loose stones. Loose stones to fashion into a shape, a place, a path. _My_ path. One that leads me out of an unexceptional childhood, towards the life of an unexceptional servant, and then into my...terrible, awful, exceptional death. Drowned in a Well. Lost in time. Swirling shapeless across aeons and ages and worlds. An unfulfilled intention. A strangled sapling. A seed that will never grow.

Until I feel a pull and I begin to push. I push and push and push. I search for a place. I find my _will._

How could I have found a place to take root? After all this time? What are these intentions that beg to be fulfilled?

“So there _is_ another will here that’s even stronger than yours,” she deduces. “Which puts me at the very bottom of a fucking pile. Inside of my own body. And people wonder why I drink….”

Suddenly, we are closer to the steps of the Summerhouse. And all around I can see the intentions being fulfilled. High walls stretch out from the original structure, bright towers of stone, twirled through with crystalline trees. Flowers wrought from nature, wrought from raw fade twist through the balustrades, spirits sing and shift and change as Solas turns and says:

“I know you’re not actually a shadow. You can come and walk beside me, if you like.”

She breathes in. But he's only talking to me. 

“Solas,” I greet him primly. We’re not friends, but we’re a kind of family I suppose. Children of the Summerhouse. Mythal’s gathered strays. I still have his little green marbles in my box of secrets.

“Amaril,” he returns. “Tell me, how goes the snooping?”

“There are many people in the house now,” I tell him. “More people means more things to hide, and more things to hide them from. With that, the secrets always grow bigger and more complicated.”

He blinks and smiles.

“You get older every time I see you, Amaril. You’re practically racing the rest of the children.”

“And you get a new outfit every time I see _you_ ,” Nesterin mutters behind us.

“I want to be grown as soon as I can,” I tell him.

“And yet you’re still the little waif who fetched me water and I’m still the soldier bleeding on the floor.”

I shrug, “I’m not a child any longer.”

“You’ll think differently in a decade, I’ll bet,” he warns. “Tell me, do you ever think of putting your secrets to use? You could trade with the cook and get second helpings, You could get softer sheets and a better bed. If you were careful and clever with when you chose to speak of them, your secrets may even find you a high position in the house one day.”

“Then they wouldn’t be secrets,” I point out. “And people probably wouldn’t like me very much.”

“Then why keep them?”

“I don’t know. I like listening. I like knowing.”

“You'll have to diversify when it comes to your teachers, then,” Solas says darkly.

“You don’t like Imsa very much.”

“I...it’s not that….I…” he struggles to find the words and then says, accusitoraily: “You’re learning how to clean the house.”

“Yes.”

“Just as I learned to fight. Everyone has their place. Their purpose. The servants keep the house, the gardeners tend to the garden, the scribes write, the mages study. I know Mythal does it to keep the order, and to keep the people safe, but how could she guess how ignorant we are growing? Life is good when it is simple. When there is abundance and people can define themselves easily. But...complexity...passion...hunger...those are important too....”

I catch a glimpse of the shadow beside me, she looks like she’s chewing on shards of broken glass. 

“Compromise over chaos...one must bend or both will break...but…this cannot be how things are supposed to be,” he murmurs. “Look at the spirits…”

“Bloody stubborn arse,” says the shadow darkly.

“Spirits have purpose and order,” I point out. It seems to please her. “They have more order than we do. Valour guards the children because it _is_ Valour. Charity twists itself up in knots over slaves because it doesn't know any better.”

“Which do you think came first? Spirits or elvhen?”

“They came at the same time. The first baby laughed the first laugh and the sun cried a spirit of joy.”

“Who told you that? Not even Imsa is that reductive,” sniffs Solas.

“One of the children. Athim. She came from outside the summer house.”

“Athim sounds like a moron. There were spirits long before us. And some of them remain. Old old old things, that belong to ideas and concepts we have no name for, who know as little of us as we do them. Neither form nor shape nor word can contain them. They’re completely free,” Solas sighs and the shadow spits darkly:

“He’s _in_ something. Already, I can tell.  How can he _already_ be in something? I’m an _idiot_ ,” and she looks closely at my memory, shudders and inhales sharply. “My lonely Hedge Mage. All he needs to do is let me love him and everything would be so simple. We talk. Isn’t it _lovely_ ? And maybe he’s got secrets...maybe he loved someone….and they hurt him, and obviously the Dalish hurt him...but I’ll be patient...because I _save_ people, because I know _he’s_ worth it and I know I can be enough..." she trails off bitterly.

“I have a favour to ask you-” says Solas. The shadow throws up her hands, forgetting that she only has the one.

“Another, I'm afraid. I have to go away. But Mythal intends to host one of her children here. I don’t know for how long. Will you watch for me? Will you pass on a few of the secrets you gather? I promise I will not use them….if I can avoid it.”

“No,” I tell him. I get a clap from the shadow. “No I won’t do that, Solas. If I stay at the summerhouse, that will be me saying I want to be a servant here. I won’t do that. I’m going to another house as soon as I can.”

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Solas warns me. “You might find that your ways are not tolerated so well in another, lesser, house. You might find yourself being made to bend and break under another’s will.”

“I want to leave,” I insist. “You can’t know how it feels to be trapped here.”

“I do know,” he insist solemnly  “Of course I know. We’re kin aren’t we? Like you, I was very young when I first came here. Mythal told me I spent half of my days pacing. Trying to bore lines in the marble tiles along the floor. I nearly went half mad with it. My friends helped me a little but all I wanted was to leave, to go away to battle and wage war….”

“And you got your war.”

“He’ll get more than one,” says the shadow heavily.

“I did. And I still spend my days pacing,” he says wistfully.

“You will never be happy, will you?" the shadow asks, sadly. "Not in any world you make."

“But...if you want to leave, I understand,” Solas concedes. “Mythal likes you. If you go to her with good intentions and an open spirit she may even help you into a comfortable place.”

Something about the word _comfortable_ feels inherently ugly to me. I want to explore. I want danger. I want excitement.

There’s a thought, in my head. And I toy with it like a stone. A stone that might well come to slot neatly into the path that is forever leading towards my death.

“A trade?” I say carefully. “I’ll trade you for the secrets.”

Solas rolls his eyes, a little amused. “What do you want, Amaril?”

“What I always wanted. To go somewhere. To see something. Arlathan, maybe?”

Solas considers it. I can see him working out the practicalities of it. He’s always busy, always somewhere always someone different. But reluctance passes into resolve. He nods.

“Very well. It’s a good trade. Do this for me, and I will take you somewhere.”

I try to remember where it was we went. But I find that I can’t. The memories remain elusive, out of reach, shifting, drifting, on the waves of water in a well. But I can see the Well of Sorrows. Far far far away in time, and yet present always.

I gasp, snot in my mouth, my hair in my mouth. My burning lungs pull in as much oxygen as they can. I will remember, I tell myself. The Oasis. I will remember and they will let me live. I see The Temple of Pride. I see the wet mud. My mouth gulps and hangs open like a dying fish, I push out a sound. And I die.

I just wanted to see somewhere…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting this out before I go off to a music festival for a few days, which will probably set back my writing schedule- though hopefully not too much. Thank you to everyone, as always, for reading!!!


	46. Nine Thousand Miles a' Walkin

 

For the first time since the White Spire, Amaril’s dream ended in drowning. Nesterin was dimly aware of waking, of standing, of stumbling onto her knees and then retching. Retching, choking, feeling the pressure on her lungs and her throat and then the water and her stomach contents and the taste of blood churning into one.

The soup of it hit the floor with a wet spatter. She couldn’t see. Images of dying in the Crossroads came to her, swirling up with Amaril’s death.  There was water in her nose and a _weight._ A terrible, huge and immovable weight pushing into her head and her back.

It took her a moment to come into herself, to get used to the sensation of the wood under her fingertips and her knees.

She looked and she breathed. Breathed and looked and focused. Beyond the windows of the Grey Warden garrett, she saw a pale morning, painting yellow and pink and crisp blue onto the mountains. Briala was in bed, sitting erect and staring at her. Sera was on her knees, rubbing circles into Nesterin’s back.

She looked furious.

“You got drunk,” Sera spat.

The voices from the well were whispering all at once again. Nesterin groaned, sniffing back the water in her nose.

“I didn’t,” she said weakly.

“I said it wouldn’t last if you didn’t want it properly.”

“I didn’t get drunk,” Nesterin gritted her teeth and mumbled, “Wish to fuck I had, especially if I knew you were going to bang on like this regardless.”

“Don’t start on the elfy stuff with me,” Sera snapped. “Speak normal.”

Nesterin had been speaking in common, as far as she could tell. But apparently not.

She listened to the Well of Sorrows, she conversed with Amaril, and dreamed of Elvhenan. It occurred to Nesterin that she might have started thinking in long dead languages. Again, the here and now of everything felt as if it was slipping through her fingers like water.

“Come on then. Why’d you throw up, if you weren’t drinking?” Sera demanded.

“I don’t know,” Nesterin groaned weakly. “Food poisoning. The flu. Something normal. Sera, I swear I didn’t drink.”

Then she mumbled about needing fresh air, pulled away and made her way out of the garrett.

 _This isn’t good is it?_ Amaril fretted. And Nesterin thought of the dream. Finding corporeality inside of it had felt alarmingly like losing another piece of herself.

Will rubs into will, she heard the mage say, and something either gives way or it leaves an unimaginable wound.

Was that what she and Amaril had become to one another now?

 _But what can we do about that?_ Amaril asked her. _If I can’t control the dreams, I can’t stop myself from hurting you._

 _And I never stopped to ask if this binding could ever be broken,_ she laughed out loud, at her own stupidity _. We’re going to have to move. Quickly. I can’t lose myself to the Well of Sorrows before Laisa is safe._

_Lose yourself? You say it like it’s an inevitability._

She’d felt the water, just underneath the surface of the dream. It had called out to her, just as before- in the Temple of Mythal. She’d answered the first time and had drunk of it deeply. And this time around, she had so much less resolve.

 _I can't know for certain. But if I am, it’s not a surprise,_ she thought. _We’ve been feeling it for months, haven’t we? You’re growing and I’m shrinking. It isn’t the ivy’s fault it wanted to live. But it strangled the other plants._

She heard Amaril shift and sob slightly, _Don’t,_ she said weakly. _Don’t pluck me out. Please. Don’t send me back to the darkness._

Nesterin laughed bitterly again, _I couldn’t if I tried. But, don’t worry, we’ll be alright. I have a purpose. I have will to see it through. I think I can cling on to that._

_I live inside your head. I do know when you’re lying to me._

They could not linger amongst the Grey Wardens any longer.

With difficulty, Nesterin dressed, feeling a terrible ache in her shoulder and all along her right side. Alcohol, she supposed had done wonders for numbing physical pain too. It had made her notice her amputation less, problems with balance attributed to the swimming sensation in her head, the difficulty of simple tasks merely the funny stumblings of a drunk.

Her body was neglected, rejected in favour of whispers from the past, secret histories, hidden sorrows and ancient magic.

 _Day by day, the form of you grows more inconsequential,_ she heard a voice from the well- not Amaril’s- whisper to her.

 _Your appetite is gone,_ another told her. _Your hair falls away in clumps. You have not had your monthly bleeding for close to a year._

_Now it is only your pain that keeps you from vanishing entirely…._

The letters of the last of the Elvhen still haunted her. The winds in the mountains seemed to carry their voices, singing songs of pain and fear and loss, tossing them upon the hard and unforgiving rock faces. She could practically hear the clashes of their final battle drifting through the quiet air.

Smoothing her hand up and down her ribs, as she walked, Nesterin sought out Alistair. She found him in a makeshift office, created within the outpost.

Like the armory, it was dark and crowded. Grey Warden cartographers had mapped the Vimmarks on a broad paper canvas and it was pinned into the stone wall. She saw red marks scrawled up and down the drawings, making out words like _shallow cave, alpine lake, 1 st entrance to mine, 2nd entrance to mine: _places they had checked and searched to no avail.

Alistair did not get up from behind his desk, he hadn’t shaved and there was stubble on his chin. He scratched it as he flicked carelessly through a bundle of letters.

“You’re busy,” she said apologetically, looking at the stack of papers beside him.

That had been her once, sifting through requisition lists and diplomatic demands. She used to drive herself to distraction, getting lost in all of the choices required of her and the endless cycle of difficult decisions and terrible consequences.

That had been the sowing part. She didn’t know it at the time, but it was far easier than the reaping.

“We get so bored when there’s no blight,” Alistair grumbled. “And then everyone starts inventing pointless problems that I have to deal with. Do you ever feel like the maid? Cleaning up all the spills only for someone to go and knock something else over?”

“Maybe. If I’d been the one in charge of the chamber pots,” she said, smiling faintly as she pulled up a chair.

“There’s always more crap. I like that,” he agreed, and then looked at her, dressed for travel, her spirit blade at her hip. “I take it you’re leaving this morning.”

“Yes. If we go now, I think we can reach our destination within a few days.”

“Sorry we couldn’t be more help.”

“No, I mainly came here to thank you before we left,” she insisted. “I am very grateful for The Grey Warden’s hospitality, Ser.”

Alistair put down the papers and sighed, at first he looked tickled by her pretty and prim platitudes, but then he frowned.

“Take some of my men up into the mountains with you,” he insisted, flicking his finger to suggest the motion of it. “I’m getting a lot of pressure from Weisshaupt about our missing wardens. Going back with nothing is another headache I do not want to deal with. And they can protect you.”

Nesterin shook her head, “I’m sorry, Warden Commander, but if I wanted an army to protect me, I’m fairly certain I could have raised one in Val Royeaux. Or Kirkwall. I might not be Inquisitor but I’m still...something.”

Maybe she should have raised an army. Or assembled a team of spies. If Fen’Harel had pieces to move in a chess match to decide the fate of a whole world, all she had was a handful of knights. It was embarrassing, wasn’t it? She’d panicked and acted rashly and now she was stuck. Facing his agents with so little power.

 Scratch that, thought Nesterin. All she had was an arm, one arm, and it was ready to push aside the board. She didn’t and she _wouldn’t_ play chess with people’s lives.

“Yes, you are something,” Alistair chuckled in agreement. “Which is exactly why you need protection.”

“You’d be surprised at what I can do with a party of four people I trust, Warden Commander.”

“Oh, I’ve seen it. Did you think the Fade smelled weird when we were in it? It smelled weird to me. Sometimes I catch myself smelling it all over again. Right before I go to sleep. Boiled vegetables or something.”

“I think that might just be the food you’ve been serving here.”

“Hale and hearty stuff,” said Alistair. “It’s good because there isn’t any flavour to confuse the men.”

She laughed lightly, putting her hand over her mouth and saw Alistair looking at her again, and then he added heavily.

“I don’t think you know what you’ve done, do you?”

“Pardon?”

“I know I’m just a Warden,” he sighed. Alistair shuffled his paper into a bundle and put them to one side, giving her his full attention. “I know Weisshaupt is off in the armpit of nowhere and we’re not supposed to wander into these matters but…as someone who-ah…” he seemed to struggle. “Let’s just say, had an opportunity a little like yours that I wanted _nothing_ to do with- you’ve ended up carrying a lot of people.”

“You’ve completely lost me now,” Nesterin confessed.

“I was raised by the Chantry. They tried to train me to be a Templar,” he began. “Well, the emphasis is on _tried_. Religious devotion wasn’t exactly my strong suit. But I’ve known plenty who suited it down to the ground. You’re venerated, Lady Herald. Signed, sealed and stamped off on by the chantry. And that means a lot.”  

Nesterin laughed at this and shook her head. _Humans_. None of them had any idea. It must have been nice. Walking through the world completely oblivious to how _deep_ ly the scars of insidious hatred and years of slavery and war were etched upon it.

“Respectfully, Alistair. I am still an elf. The chantry might paint over my knife ears, but when it becomes convenient they’ll forget. Likely, it’s already happening.” she looked down and added: “I didn’t necessarily cover myself in glory before I left Val Royeaux.”

“Sometimes it's more convenient for people in power to remind everyone,” he said heavily.

“Tell that to Shartan. Or to Ameridan. Or Garahel, or the Hero of…” she started and winced at her insensitivity. “Fereldan.”

“All ashes that get pulled out every now and again to make an argument. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. When Mirah...when she died...it was like she became a weapon,” said Alistair. Nesterin watched him taste her name on his teeth. Like an addict returning to the bottle.

“Ten years later,” he went on, recovering swiftly. “And Clarel was still using her memory to justify turning the Grey Wardens into a demon army. And they all followed. Never mind what she would have really said about the whole thing. Which would have been _very_ sweary.”

Poor Alistair, she thought. That poor, long dead woman. Commanding, leading, dying and then losing all control of their own narrative. There was so little justice in it.

When Solas had reproached her for giving up her soul to Mythal, Nesterin should have reminded him that her voice and her bones already belonged to the Chantry.

“And Mirah just killed an Old God. Something unknown and scary that no one really wants to think about. You’re the _Herald_ of _Andraste._ That’s faith. That’s _hope_. That’s a heck of a weapon and more wars than any blight ever caused.”

What was left of her sense of propriety kept Nesterin from smashing her head on the desk. Repeatedly. She was never _never_ going to shake off this Herald thing. Never mind that she didn’t know Andraste from her own arsehole.

But of course, she’d courted it in the end. It was her own fault, for giving up. Giving up and going to the parties, singing the songs in the hospital, waving in the parade and sitting for that confounded portrait.

“Try not to die out there,” Nesterin paraphrased sharply. “It might lead to something even stupider than a demon army. Got it.”

But of course, she was probably dying already- practically post-marked for the Well of Sorrows at this point. She wouldn’t even get a tree. Like her mother and her ancestors and all those who died in the fight for the Dales. She’d get stone. Stone and the words _Herald of Andraste_ carved into it forever.

 “So, my offer?”

She paused for a moment and then decided, as a compromise: “Give Rainier leave to come with me. He’s a warden. He’s my friend. He’s as good to me as twenty others. And I promise, whatever information I find, I will pass on to you.”

She stood up, and then remembered, pausing in the door,

“Get the dreamers out of your armory, Warden Commander. They might just be bones to you, but they mean a lot to my people”

* * *

 From the Grey Wardens, she received a beautifully crafted map of the Vimmarks and a bundle of new supplies; thick coats for moving into the thin atmosphere close to the mountain summits and basic military style rations; dried meat and hard biscuits and no flavour at all to confuse them. As a gift, tucked away at the bottom of the pile, Alistair included two bottles of infamous Grey Warden Vintages. His own creations.

She didn’t say no to them when she found them. She didn’t. She should have. And she didn’t. They were sat at the bottom now of her travelling pack, practically burning a hole through the fabric. _Throw them away. Don’t throw them away. Throw them away,_ had now settled to become the beating of her heart.

As they gathered near the high gates, waiting for them to open, Thom stood close to her and said cheerfully,

“If you’re trying to put things right, maybe you need a Warden. Maybe you need me.”

And she smiled weakly, recalling the memory, and said,

“Ah ha. It’s funny because it’s actually true this time.”

Sera and Thom in the same party felt almost like the old days. Her smile lingered a little longer than usual. But then Elandrin stepped forwards and it waned.

He’d picked up a bruise on his jaw. A fresh one, tinged red and purple with burst blood vessels.

Another curl of anger and horror flared up in her stomach. Had the thing that had once been Valour made him hurt himself? It had fled from Thom so perhaps it had wanted a fight it could win. What a nasty creature it was.

But then Elandrin revealed that not to be the case:

“I’ve been trying to come to an agreement with the spirit. We fought. I think I won. I think I can keep winning for a little. I should go further with you. What if you still need me?”

“No Elandrin,” she said heavily, pinching her nose and unable to look at the hope on his face. “It’s very admirable, your trying to overcome your demon, but I won’t risk Laisa’s life on it. Valour is not very good for me. I don’t think I can be around it and do what I have to do next."

She watched his face fall and added:

“There’s a place for you in Kirkwall if you want to see Mirwen and Bel. I would be very grateful if you could watch over them and pass on my love. But I understand if you can’t,” she patted him lightly on the shoulder and said, with a deep sincerity, “You are a very good man, Elandrin.”

And she had been so terrible to him.

“And what?” he responded in a low voice, trembling. “I spend my life the same as before? Lonely, wandering. Telling stories. Only now I know. How it was to be loved by someone. How the stories are lies. And what kind of monster lives inside of me.”

Nesterin sighed, saying:

“If I didn’t tell myself that the truth, no matter how sharply it stings, is always better than a life spent in happy ignorance, I’d have lost my mind years ago.”

It was cold comfort, she supposed, especially coming from her. Her bare face, her missing arm, her wasting flesh and glassy look were all a terrible testament to the cost of truth and knowledge.

“I will come back for you,” she added firmly. “When I have Laisa. If you can be brave enough to face her, I know my sister will be brave enough to accept you. And help you.”

 _Will you tell Valour something from me?_ Asked Amaril.

“A voice from the Well wants Valour to know something too. She wants it to know that Amaril has been watching. That Amaril remembers. It thinks that the spirit always dies, but she says that it always lingers. That spirits are like candles. They might be blown out, they might be drowned, but they will never be broken down,” Nesterin listened and spoke, word for word, but she hesistated and drew in a breath before she could continue:

“All anyone needs is a fire to light them.” 

* * *

 

 They began by circling around the western point of the Grey Warden outpost, heading towards a scattered subalpine forest. Green firs standing straight and tall clustered around the path they took but began to thin out as they began their ascent.

Revekah lead them now, scrambling ahead with a surefooted certainty about the land. Nesterin no longer had the heart to keep her in chains. Quite honestly, she barely had the heart to take her. The mountains must have held terrible memories of the mad Panellas and the darkness of her childhood.

Nesterin had confessed as much before they left. But Revekah had laughed and sneered, as usual.

“Stop trying to pretend that you know me,” had been Revekah’s response.

And now, there seemed to be no hesitation, no regret in her face or in her movements.

Looking over the open tundra, they saw August Rams and elk with great horns grazing. Towards the west, they were given sporadic views of the wide sky and saw that the line of mountains splintered off into two parallel ridges. Thom pointed out the white-tipped peaks of the opposite ridge and named them: Iron Mountain, Greenstone Point, Mount Never Summer, Dragon Horn.

The Well of Sorrows whispered of different names **:** Alastarasyl, Lav'ta'durgen, Ir'ina'lan'ehn, Irmorisenatha.

 _All just pointless attempts at mastery,_ said the Dalish girl in Nesterin, talking right back to the Well of Sorrows with her own knowledge. T _here are idiots in every age. As if a Mountain gives a toss about the language you name it in._

She might not know as much about arcane magic, or of the world before the veil, but this…she knew this…walking, rocks underfoot, the bite of the cold, the black eyes of the ptarmigans, the coarse heather, heavy clouds and the bones of bear cubs in shallow water.

Nature. Dangerous and beautiful and wholly and completely indifferent to every race of people. Fighting back against the fade and the arrogance of the Elvhen people when the veil had come down. Fighting back against the ruins of human civilisations too. Demanding death, demanding life, giving with the generosity of a mother and taking with cold cruelty in an endless cycle.

They made good progress. According to Revekah. Where the path began to grow difficult, where glacial falls disturbed the rocks and poured down from the mountain into ponds and lakes, they stopped briefly near one such body of water to shelter from the bright midday sun, to re-adjust their boots, eat a little lunch, and take a moment of rest.

The map called it Sky Pond. It glittered as brilliant and blue as an eluvian tipped onto its side. The water was bitingly cold but Nesterin shucked off her boots and stood in it, head turned towards the sky, eyes closed, breathing in the fresh mountain air whilst the others ate.

The voices from the well seemed to quiet now. The little lake in the mountains didn’t send her plunging into whispers and dreams of Elvhenan. It made her think instead about the frozen lake at Haven. It made her think about Deshanna and her clan and her sisters.

“If the little girl I used to be could have seen a Dalish person like you, could have seen you like this…” said Briala, suddenly close behind her, and pulling her out of her reverie.

Nesterin was bemused by the strangely wistful quality of the other woman’s voice.

She looked back at Briala, a city elf encased within sheer cliff faces and not alienage walls. And back at Thom and Sera, joking and chatting amongst the scattered supplies. A moment of respite. A moment to breathe. They seemed so few and far between that she wanted to fix it and hold it forever.

Nesterin pointed out a clump of bright green leaves growing to about calf height near the water’s edge and wandered towards it.

“Wax currants,” she said to Briala, crouching beside the red berries that shined like clusters of jewels. “They taste sweet. My clan cooked with them, and you can eat them raw.”

She plucked a few. Some for Briala, some for herself. Nesterin would have welcomed a rush of nostalgia from the taste of the currants, thrown into a stew or boiled into a jelly during the lost days of her childhood. But the burst of sweetness in the fruit drifted quickly into bitterness and then she couldn’t taste anything at all.

The water around her ankles began to feel like the pull of the Well of Sorrows. She thought of the bottles, hidden away amongst the supplies and resented her friends for being so close that she couldn’t go back and drink them.

“Oh dear,” confessed Briala pulling a face around a mouthful of wax currants, looking out at the crisp mountains, as picturesque and perfect as a painting. “I think I’m falling back in love with the idea of the Dalish.”

“It’s not always like this,” Nesterin reminded her. “We’re not an idea. We’re not myth. We get hungry and desperate. The land isn’t our friend. The world isn’t our friend. And we’re just people in it. Doing the best we can.”

“Yes,” Briala agreed, looking down at her feet and sighing heavily. “We are more alike than we are different, and I held the Dalish up to an impossible standard. It was unfair of me not to allow them their mistakes.”

The walk got more difficult as the day went on. The trail they took became a series of steep rock steps and they gasped for air, ascending hundreds of feet in little more than a mile. Their ascent then became a scramble, where hands were necessary to haul themselves up into the rock faces. Rushing water flowed from the melting snow high in the mountains through parts of the narrow path, and Nesterin tried to haul herself one handed along, stumbling and making such of mess of it, that Sera took it upon herself to reach out and push her from behind.

“So, Beardy,” Sera called behind her. “You get to fight any Darkspawn yet?”

“We already fought Darkspawn,” Nesterin reminded her, rattling off the list: “Valammar. Griffon Wing Keep. Crestwood. So _so_ many of them beneath the Storm Coast…Bloody _Corypheus_ , Sera. Remember him?”

“A bit. Cor-riggy-friggy. Rings a bell. Didn’t he have a hat or something?”

When the steep incline levelled out, Nesterin took a moment to take a series of sharp, rattling breaths. The trail had led them into a winding grey boulder field, close to the mountain walls. The slipping rocks would be hard underfoot and Nesterin prepared herself for the scrapes and bruises that she would undoubtedly suffer.

“But what I mean is,” Sera explained to Rainier when they started walking again. “It’s different now isn’t it? You can _feel_ them and not just stab stab stab at them and pretend you know what the shit you’re on about.”

Rainier chortled. “Yes, Sera. It’s different now. I don’t have to pretend to know what the shit I’m on about.”

Sera thought for a minute, “Does taint feel like needing to take a big shit?”

“No?” Rainier asked, confused. But Nesterin knew.

 _Shit_. She kept forgetting Sera had magic and that she wasn’t dealing with it. She should have been teaching her, like Briala, but that…oh, Nesterin didn’t think she had the strength for something like that.

Nor did she particularly want to deal with a world where _Sera_ could shoot _fire_ at will.

“Everyone’s different,” Sera went on. “Everything’s different. Some of it’s good, right? But mostly its shit. I joined the Inquisition to get normal back. But now…what’s normal? Is normal even good? It makes my head hurt. Normal shouldn’t make my head hurt. That’s why its normal…”

 “This feels pretty normal for us,” Rainier pointed out, crossing the boulder field with far more difficulty than the lithe elf women he was accompanying. “Walking and walking and more bloody walking.”

“You won’t catch me arguing with that,” said Nesterin, leaning against her hand on the high mountain wall.

“Just like the song int it? For to see the lady Herald, nine thousand miles of walking…heh,” Sera giggled.

Nesterin frowned, “What song?”

“You don’t know the song? The soldiers sang it all the time at Skyhold.”

“Maker’s balls, Sera,” Thom called angrily. “Don’t tell her the song.”

“What song? There’s a song? About me? And you both know it?”

“I know it too,” Briala confessed. Nesterin stopped walking now and turned sharply to face the rest of the party.

“It found its way to Val Royauex,” Briala explained aplogetically. “And Halamshiral. Probably when the soldiers all went home.”

“And me. I know it,” Revekah called, gleefully waving from the front.

“ _Revekah_ knows it? You all know it and I don’t?” Nesterin asked, appalled.

“Don’t sing the song, Sera,” Thom warned again.

“Oh no. Oh fenedhis. It’s dirty isn’t it?”

“I don’t think Maryden wrote it, no,” said Thom guiltily.

“Come on then. Out with it,” Nesterin sighed heavily. “I’m a big girl…” and then, when she was met with silence, she turned to Sera, “I swear, I’ll start singing Sera Was Never if you don’t tell me how it goes right now.”

It was an effective threat. When Sera bellowed the song it had a stomping, lively, tavern song quality to it. And, as predicted, it was good and offensive:

 

“For to see the Lady Herald,

Nine thousand miles a’ walking.

Her fingers all a’ glowing

Her lips a’ busy talking

 

From deep inside the forest

She came to praise the maker

Andraste’s chosen Herald

A blessing when you take her!

 

And so her soldiers sing,

Her soldiers brave and brawny  
For her arse is bare and she lives for the air,   
And she wants not praise nor glory!”

 

“And you get the idea,” Rainier interrupted gruffly after the first chorus.

“I can imagine,” Nesterin said flatly.

“Look, soldiers get rowdy,” said Rainier. “They have their orders, but they still need to cut loose. It’s not really about you… more…them and the stuffy chantry stuff. It’s like saying ‘Andraste’s Tits’ or ‘Maker’s Balls’.”

“So it’s the Chantry’s _bare arse_ they’re all singing about? Because it feels a lot like mine.”

 “To be fair I think it started off as ‘feet’ and not arse when it was written….”

“Great. And it’s catchy. It’s in my head now. Thanks for that.”

If she wasn’t some pious little prig she was the Dalish slut at the butt of everyone’s jokes. It wasn’t news, but she couldn’t help it if the reminders still stung.

“If you don’t like the line, we’ll fix it” Sera offered. “For her arse has hair and she snores like a bear…” she suggested. And then thought and said. “For her tits are square and she smells like a mare…”

 “For her patience’s shot and she wants you to stop…” Nesterin said, rolling her eyes.

“And she wants not praise nor glory!” Sera bellowed back at her.

Suddenly, a rumbling from overhead halted the singing immediately. From the top of the mountain, a huge boulder bounced along the wall and came crashing down onto the path in front of them, splintering into a thousand shards.

As others began to drop, she felt a force hit her back. Thom pushed her down, shield up over both of them, and she could hear rocks the size of fists hammering on the metal.

It gave her time to cast her barrier. Just as the mountain began to rumble. She called for a quick retreat and there was a shriek from somewhere on high. A strange, fade-touched shriek of no animal that Nesterin could identify.

There was a strangeness in the air. The veil felt tight and the Fade felt like a heavy pressure. The air crackled with magic like burned leaves, and her mana seemed to sharpen like tiny needles all around her skin. The pain of it was almost enough to bring her to her knees.

 “We can’t go this way,” said Briala, looking pale and frightened, clutching at her chest, face twisted up with pain.

Sera gritted her teeth and bunched her hand into a fist, rocks falling around them. “What the shit? What the shit is that?”

“That shouldn’t have happened,” said Revekah, frowning up at the side of the mountain. She looked, alarmingly, more pale and afraid than the rest of them. “This shouldn’t be happening…”

“What’s happening?” Nesterin gasped, still feeling like there were knives under her clothes.

“The protections must have changed,” Revekah confessed, her eyes darting wildly around. “To…I don’t know what to.”

And then they heard another shriek.


	47. Heart of Darkness (part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lateness. Hopefully two chapters makes up for it?

****Once they had retreated a safe distance from the rockslide, Nesterin had to make a decision. Fight or find another way.  A fight meant pushing through rock falls, up a narrow boulder field towards some kind of creature. Most likely several creatures, she noted, as a boulder shattered somewhere near her ankle, and she listened to another shriek, this new one at a slightly lower pitch.

“Varterral,” said Briala grimly, at almost the same time as The Well of Sorrows. “I’ve fought them before.”

 _Like the stories,_ thought Nesterin. By the light of a campfire, Deshanna had spun tales, passed down through generations of great spidery creatures, first fashioned from fallen trees by Dirthamen to guard against dragons and other threats to the people _._ Deshanna said that if the Varterral were magically bound to guard something, they would stay alive no matter how many times they were defeated.

Despite herself, Nesterin tried craning up to get a good look at the creature from the stories, only to be pulled back sharply when another rock came tumbling down.

“Oh, well who could have ever seen this coming? The spy led us right into a trap,” muttered Rainier.

“I didn’t,” said Revekah and Nesterin- for better or for worse- believed her.

“But they’re not supposed to attack elves. That’s what my Keeper always told me.”

“Try telling them that,” Briala said with a grimace.

 _Elvhen_ , the Well of Sorrows corrected. _They do not attack Elvhen_ . _This one is bound to protect the mountain pass now. You can feel the magic can’t you?_

They’d all felt it. Pulsing painfully in their brains like needles, making the air taste hot and heavy.

And, even without the pain, could Nesterin honestly summon up enough strength to hold her spirit blade correctly? Could she run and dodge from the rockfall below, stay alive long enough to withstand the assault from above and then move past unkillable ancient creatures?

She watched the rocks rain down from the mountain, hurled by spindly grey arms that looked almost as if they were made of ash trees and pictured:

A broken leg…

A shattered arm….

And then a splintered skull…

As a huge boulder rolled down the mountain, losing shards and spitting splinters like heavy artillery, they leapt away. The boulder field had begun to slide down the steep incline that they had climbed.

The mountain trembled. Dirt and stones and grit and gravel took on the appearance of water, rolling downwards like a swiftly flowing river.

Nesterin tried to dig her feet into the ground and hold position, but when a rock collided with Briala’s ankle, the Orlesian woman let out a howl of pain, stumbled and went barrelling into Nesterin, who collided with Sera who grabbed onto Thom and they were suddenly all sliding, caught up in the sharp tide of rocks, hurtling down the side of the mountain.

Stones scraped across her skin as they tumbled, tossed on the tide like flotsam and jetsam to be spat out upon the shore.

As the ground levelled out, the rock slide stopped. Dust rose into the air like smoke from a doused fire and the party was left battered and bleeding, their skin tinged grey from the dirt.

Gritting her teeth, feeling bruises form and blood trickle down her arm, Nesterin heard nothing but panting, a few sliding stones and the silence.

“Bugger,” coughed Thom, shifting to stand after a few moments “Must’ve swallowed about seventy stones on the way down.”

“Me too. Now there will be no need to stop for dinner,” said Briala, clutching her hip as she tried to stand.

“Mmmm. Stone pie. Like meat pie or apple pie but, you know, with added ouch,” Sera added darkly. “Going in _and_ out.”

Revekah was the last to come sliding down the mountain, a mess of red hair and white flesh, tossed around on the tide of rocks like a rag doll. As soon as she hit the level ground, she was on her feet again, racing up towards the mountain, trying to climb and muttering,

“No. No. No. No. _No._ ”

Nesterin cursed, she groaned and hauled up her body with great difficulty, rushing to where Revekah had slid down the side of the stones again, grabbing her arm and saying:

“Stop. Stop, it’s too difficult to climb.”

Wild-eyed and frantic, Revekah turned to her,

“But that was the way. That was _my_ way. There were no Varterrals the last time I was here.”

Nesterin looked up at the path. They’d have to crawl up on their hands and knees. Further up, they’d have to use their hands to dig through., taking double the time to gain half of the ground they had just covered. Only to find the Varterrals waiting for them….

“Bullshit,” spat Sera from behind. “I said right at the start she was leading us into a trap.”

“If I wanted to trap you or kill you it would have happened weeks ago,” Revekah snarled back. “Pathetic fucking flat ear.”

“Twang your ears, elfy knob muncher.”

“How about I cut your’s off, shem lover?”

“ _Enough_!” Nesterin told them sharply.

A scream of pure frustration rose up inside of her. But she pushed it down with all of the other screams of frustration she’d had to silence over the years.

Pulling her pack from her shoulder, she rummaged into the bag. The first thing her fingers found was the smooth, cold glass of one of the Grey Warden Vintages Alistair had given her (unbroken, she noted with grim satisfaction), the second was the Grey Warden’s map.

“The abandoned mine is close to here, isn’t it Thom?” she set the map down on the ground and signalled them to crouch around it. With her fingers she traced a line from the second entrance to the mine, towards the path they had been intending to take. “Look, it’ll take time but we can probably find a way under the Varterrals.”

“Sure, Let’s take the Deep Roads instead. That'll be safer. Said nobody. Nobody in the whole history of the world ever,” said Sera.

“I’m pretty sure that mine was abandoned for a reason,” Rainier agreed. “If you don’t want to face whatever’s up there, you don’t want to face darkspawn.”

“I’d face the Varterral but the path is blocked. We either go back to the Grey Wardens or we go through the mine,” Nesterin turned back to them and added firmly. “And I’ll tell you now, I have no intention of going back to the Grey Wardens without my sister. Even if I have to move this whole bloody mountain…”

“She’ll just lead us into another trap.”

Folding the map again and putting it back into her pack, Nesterin sighed.

“She’s not leading us. _I’m_ leading. But you don’t have to come with me.”

“I have no problem with going underground. I always think it’s wise to stick to the shadows, remember?” said Briala, and Rainier muttered:

“Don’t be daft. So long as you need me, I’m never leaving you.”

“Sera?”

“Fucking pissing fucking fine.”

* * *

After the encounter with the varterral, the mountains seemed less hospitable. The ground was less steady underfoot, there seemed to be more snarls and snags in the rocks, and the scrubby bushes snapped at their clothes with sharpened twigs and thorns.

When the sun dipped behind rolling grey clouds, the temperature dropped sharply and the fog began to creep over the mountain. Nesterin thought she could see the rocks take on strange shapes, almost like people and like creatures in appearance. Shadows of the final stand the elvhen people took out here, all those years ago.

It was Thom who pointed out the glow of a fire somewhere on the mountain behind them.

Through the fog, it had a sickly yellow light and looked to be only a few hours walking away from the party. There was no way to deduce who had made it, but Nesterin could say for certain it wasn’t Dalish. The position- slapped onto the mountain like a quivering mole or an open wound- was inconsistent with the way her people tried to camp, sheltered from the elements and the shemlen alike. It had all the brash confidence of a band of humans who expected the whole world, the weather included, to simply bow to their mastery.

“I have concerns,” Briala confessed when they drew close to the mine’s entrance.

Here and there, they found traces of Dwarven activity. Places where the path had been levelled off into a smooth road, blast marks in the rock face, a mining cart, the skeleton of a pony picked apart by carrion, and clumps of powdery black slag heaps. The mountain had already begun to reclaim the heaps: there were weeds and grass already beginning to grow on them. And all of it was abandoned.

“It’s probably just more Grey Wardens, sent by Alistair to trail us. It wouldn’t be the first time a human took it upon themselves to go over my head and ignore my wishes,” said Nesterin bitterly.

But Briala turned her sharp eyes towards Revekah, trailing amongst them with a visibly depleted energy.

“It’s not the fire. It’s her. I might be wrong but she didn’t know about the Varterrals. And now I have to think to myself: what if one of my spies had been captured by the chantry?”

“How many spies _do_ you have? Roughly?”

Briala shrugged, “I spent the better part of a decade cultivating clusters of intelligence agents all over. At the university, the palace, parliament and the chantry. I have sisters, undergraduates and kitchen cooks alike.”

“And how many of them have ended up working unwittingly for Fen’Harel, do you think?”

“More than a few,” Briala conceded, after considering it. “For as many secrets as it keeps, Orlais also hemorrhages information like an open wound.”

“I’m aware. Thanks to Leliana and Josephine, I know more intimate details about the marriages of the noble houses than I ever wanted to.”

“It’s always been like that. It always will be. Spying and leaking and trading and hiding is the lifeblood of my country. But most of the spies? They go about their business and pass on information should I need it.  And if they are betrayed, if they betray me? No matter, it ends there. But those who would take up the blade for me? Who go where I bid them? Just like our friend Revekah over there... That’s a different kind of game….”

It had been the same in the Inquisition, under Leliana’s ever watchful eye. Some agents, Nesterin had recruited personally, some she knew by name; the Orlesian Merchant Belle, the dragon-obsessed Frederic, Sister Tanner and Jana and Anais, but there were many more she did not.

Too many, all told. In the end.

It was hard to think back fondly if she was forced to picture a tainted tangle of conflicting motivations, greed and corruption. The way _he’d_ made her see it. Another terrible price paid for knowledge. The failed Qunari invasion had revealed just how deeply the blight had gone. And just how many mistakes Nesterin had made.

So she’d killed it. Like a horse with a wounded knee. She’d killed the Inquisition. It had seemed, at the time, like the inescapable consequence of too many loose ends and too much hoarded power.

She felt like she’d lost control, and in response she’d killed something that she loved.

“I would remove them. Give them up for dead or see them permanently silenced by some means or other” Briala continued.

Nesterin thought of Solas’ advice to Sera about the future of the Red Jennys and was unsettled by the resemblance.

“And if I were Fen’Harel, I would alter my procedure, plug up the leaks and the holes,” Briala continued. “Frankly, even them I would have been keeping in the dark to begin with. Keep them following one order at a time. Always operating on a need-to-know basis.”

“They focus on the trees while you focus on the wood. I’m sure Fen’Harel agrees with you.”

It was fitting that they had come to the entrance of the mine now. Their talk seemed better suited to the darkness.

On their way in, they passed a sort of makeshift office at the mouth of the mine. There were still calculations written in ink on a little desk made of red wood. A candle had only been half burned away before being extinguished. Someone had left their knitting on the chair: a clump of sharp needles and black wool wrapped around a partially formed scarf.

Above the desk, a map had been nailed into the wall.

Cupping her hand and bringing forth a red spark of light, Nesterin saw that the map of the deep roads was coloured as luridly as a rainbow, coded for granite veins, iron ore, lyrium and slate. But here and there, she noticed, the map had been scrawled over with black.

Each swirling void marked on the map stood out with startling clarity, as heavy and as ominous as black thunderclouds on the horizon. They were dark hearts at the centre of the mountains and the well of sorrows whispered to her, drawing her to them.

Revekah had conjured up her own ball of light. And the shadows across her face flickered and changed and warped her features. It was hard to get a read on her expression.

“Do you think she knows?” Nesterin asked Briala, when they started walking down the mine.

“It’s difficult to say.”

Nesterin sighed, “Poor Revekah,I...think...in her own way...she...loves him. Or...not _him_ ,” she corrected quickly. “But an idea of him.”

She surprised herself by being possessive of the image of a lonely hedge mage. As if that were the real thing and as if that was still somehow _hers_.

“You’re worried about hurting her feelings? That doesn’t seem...relevant….”

“It’s completely relevant. We found it out when you questioned her remember? She denies it but Revekah takes pride in her status.”

“And she made mistakes because she felt undermined and wanted to be spiteful,” Briala agreed with a sigh. “This makes her dangerous to us.”

“Your spies have feelings, Briala. Their feelings affect the people they work for. And we usually end up ignoring them. But they still matter.”

“I don’t think she knows. But I think she is beginning to suspect something,” Briala turned around to look at Revekah, out of earshot at the back of the party. Then she added, very quietly,  “We should consider disposing of her.”

Nesterin stopped still, balled up her fist and whirled around to face the other woman.

“I didn’t think you’d like that,” Briala confessed with a grimace.

“As canny as ever,” snapped Nesterin.

“It’s not a thing I take any pleasure in suggesting. But look, in all likelihood she’s useless to us. I don’t think they want her back. In all likelihood she’s a _danger_ to us. When I was Celene’s spymaster-”

“-Look at my face Briala. Do you see a mask? Do you see Celene or Gaspard or anyone who plays those sorts of games? When I was the Inquisitor, I would never give orders to have anyone killed on the off chance they _might_ look at me a bit funny.”

“No, I suppose you’d always let them get the first swipe in,” said Briala darkly.

“Yes I did,” Nesterin agreed. “I still do. And when I’ve run out of arms and legs, maybe I’ll admit that it was a bad idea. But look, I’m still three for four.”

When she waved her amputation at the Orlesian woman a beat passed between the two of them and then Briala laughed, shaking her head at the ridiculousness of the whole thing.

“Four for five. You forget your head, my friend.”

Nesterin put her hand on Briala’s arm, and the Orlesian woman touched it with her own.

“My people- _our_ people would say Lethallin,” Nesterin told her.

“You forget your head, Lethallin,” Briala corrected and Nesterin sighed.

“I still want to see where she tries to take us. Chances are it means sifting through more bones and remnants. But…” she trailed off, hoping fiercely that bones and remnants was simply a metaphor.

That hoping, however, was cut short.

With a shriek, a shape suddenly emerged from the darkness. It crawled from the low ceiling of the mine. Nesterin took in the sight of a thorax, abdomen and spindly, scuttling legs.

Her hand was still on Briala’s arm. Swiftly, Nesterin used it to push Briala forcefully out of the path of the giant spider. Before she could draw her spirit blade, the creature took a swipe at her with its long legs.

Slicing through fabric and skin alike, Nesterin let out a sharp gasp as the hooked point of a glistening black claw ripped a long line into her stomach. Her spirit blade hit the floor with a clatter and quickly, she cast a barrier over herself and Briala before a dart of caustic spider venom shot from the creature’s fangs.

It hit the barrier with a splatter, and Nesterin could smell coal and ash and singed meat. Then, the spider reared up, as a pale blue liquid began to erupt from within it, flicking over the barrier like rain. Sera loosed a few arrows into its thorax and Thom went hacking into its hard outer shell with his sword.

Nesterin watched the spider twitching on the ground. A minute passed before they were certain it was dead. Her clothes were wet and hot blood had started to spill out of the deep wound.

Gingerly, she slid down the wall of the mine, pulling up her shirts. On another person, the wound wouldn’t have worried her. It would take a little while to search for how deep the tear went, to will skin to knot back together, but she could have done it with enough focus, without the pain clouding her mind. To heal herself in such a way would be difficult and likely very very taxing.

“What do you need?” asked Thom, at her side instantly.

“Pack,” she said, pointing to the bag, breathing heavily. There were bandages inside of it. And then she remembered the wine. “No. _Wait_. There’s nothing in there. I just…some fabric or a rag something.”

“Can’t you heal it?”

“I’m certain I can,” she lied. “But I…. don’t…. it might take a while. I don’t want to lose too much blood while I’m doing it.”

The wound smarted terribly. It had begun to feel like burning. Promptly her friends ripped a few pieces of cloth and passed it to her. She was so stupid. Bandages would have been better, would have been cleaner, less covered in dirt and rocks. But she’d rather risk the infection than them discovering the bottles.

 _Get them to help you,_ the voice of Amaril told her. _Briala and Sera and Revekah...._

_What?_

_Don’t you remember the dreams? The servants in the summerhouse? The elves raising the Sonallium and the new towers for Mythal. Don’t you remember Imsa on the lawn? Work together. Harness the collective will of your friends. It’s stronger._

_But they’re just beginners. And this isn’t Elvhenan. And-you know- I don’t want to explode my own stomach._

_Everyone starts somewhere. Let me tell you what to do. And let me see what I can do with the power of the well._

Nesterin groaned and gritted her teeth, “Briala, Sera? Can you put your hands on me?”

“What?”

“Healing spell,” she said weakly.

They both hesitated, but when Nesterin felt a little looser in herself, a little light headed and felt the tension slip out of her shoulders, Briala crouched down and touched her stomach, just below the cut.

Sera backed away, “You mean... _me_...do magic? No way. I don’t…”

“I need you, Sera.”

“She’s bleeding badly,” Briala snapped, grabbing onto Sera’s wrist, pulling her down and pulling Sera’s cold hand onto Nesterin’s stomach too.

“Find me,” she told them, but she wondered how much of her there would be left find. So she corrected: “Find the Well. There’s threads. There’s an ocean of a thousand threads. Take hold of it. Pull on it. Just listen to my voice.”

It wasn’t going to work. Beyond the Well of Sorrows, Nesterin could feel the fade like an empty swirl of water. There was no time to search, it was pointless to try.

She drew the fade around herself and concentrated solely on doing the spell herself.

But then, there, distantly, minutely, she felt the amorphous pressure of something. It could have been a light hand, on the small of her back. A tiny flare of warmth, the littlest spark of power. She felt the skin around her cut begin to tingle.

“Find the slices. Push past the skin, push deep,” she told them, and she did feel the push. Strangers fiddling about in her guts. It was disconcerting, it made her hiss, it sent a sharp flare of pain through her back. They hesitated, the warmth began to withdraw.

“Keep going. You’re doing really well,” she insisted, shutting her eyes now. “There’s a tear. But there’s not. My body wants to push it back together. It’s already pushing it back together. You’re only helping it along. Push. _Fuck._ ”

Now it hurt. A _lot_. Pulling, wrenching and knitting. Nesterin kicked her leg sharply and let out a guttural groan. Sera pulled back, shaking.

“I can’t...I don’t want….” she said, horrified.

“Move out of the way then,” snapped Revekah, barging past Sera.

Revekah’s magic felt like a harsh poke in the spine. But she could feel their mana commingling, pouring into one another, swirling and churning and growing.

It pulled the skin on her stomach together, and beneath the blood, the wound began to close and seal and heal.

The air tasted rich and full-bodied, a sharp citrusy tang from Briala, rocks and wet earth and burning fruitwood, like a unique and complex mix of a Grey Warden’s vintage.

And they couldn’t really look each other in the eye when it was finished.

There was a strange intimacy to it, Nesterin couldn’t help but notice. Like a caress under the clothes, against bare skin.They’d mixed up their mana and it was hard to untie the knots in it, she could still feel the. Rubbing against her like a cat might twine around the ankles. Warm and soft and vibrating.

“ _Huh_ ,” said Briala weakly, sitting back on her calves.

“Yeah,” Nesterin agreed. Because she wasn’t sure what else to say, clearing her throat and pulling down her torn shirt. “Thank you. Would you help me up?

* * *

 

They suggested resting for a little while, maybe even making camp and stopping to eat, but Nesterin insisted that she could still walk, that they could cover more ground and push deeper into the mountain before they’d have to stop for the evening.

Little by little, the presence of Briala’s mana, of Revekah’s mana and even of Sera’s began to fall away from her. It was an oddly lonely feeling . It reminded her of that cold feeling, after sex, when the crescendo of sensations began to wane.

Sera looked horrified- maybe even angry, Revekah took it in her stride, and Thom seemed completely oblivious to it all. But Briala wanted to ask questions. One’s that Nesterin wasn’t necessarily sure she had the answer to.

“Was that a normal spell?”

“Not really,” said Nesterin, rubbing her nose. “Not to me, anyway. We’re already more mages than the Dalish are comfortable keeping together at any point. The closest I’ve seen to this was  probably at Adamant fortress. The mages there were under Corypheus’ thrall, and they summoned demons together. Or…” she thought, “The rebel mages, when they helped me to close the breach near Haven. But I’m sure it’s something the circle discourages.”

“Naturally,” agreed Briala. “They treat mages just like they treat the elves. Humans worked hard for thousands of years to make our people feel weak and alone. But when people like you and I work to unite them, amazing things can be done.”

“I just united the people already in power,” Nesterin pointed out, guiltily. “But I suppose this magic still takes place in Tevinter. But outside of the Imperium, the practise must be all but dead. Along with most of the other things from Elvhenan”

After trying to follow the path through to the mountain, they began to encounter a series of dead ends. At first it seemed like harmless rock falls and mine collapses, but when they were forced to drift farther and farther from the line Nesterin took, she began to worry. It was like being labyrinth, but all of the choices had already been made and a definite path had seemed to emerge.

Now, Nesterin had to concede, it was starting to feel more like a trap. But if Revekah knew it, she was doing an incredible job of pretending otherwise.

At one more rockfall, one more mine shaft sealed off, Revekah physically punched the stones. They didn't shift and Nesterin heard the smack of knuckle on immovable rock.

Clutching her hand, Revekah swore and spat and Thom said:

“That settles it. I say we stay here and make camp. We’ll figure this out tomorrow.”

“No,” said Nesterin. “There’s another path,” she said and pointed out another mine shaft.

“It’s too far West, we’ve started going in circles.”

He was probably right, but a grim kind of resolve had begun to take a hold of Nesterin. One way or another she would see this fucking thing through.

“We keep going. We move forwards.”

“Have you seen the blood on your shirt? That was a deep wound: you need to rest. You need to eat.”

“We keep going,” she insisted.

“In the morning,” Briala urged her.

“We’re underground. There won’t be a morning,” pressing her temples, feeling a pulse in her forehead she sighed. “If you need to eat we can stop for a little bit. But then I really think we should-”

“You’re afraid to sleep,” said Briala, narrowing her eyes.

“No I’m not,” Nesterin lied.

In truth, she was worried what another dream of Amaril would do to her come morning. The last one had been tough, had left her feeling drained and damaged. The next one, she was almost certain would be the same, if not worse.

“Yes you are. Why?”

Now Sera also came and stood and stared at her. All of them stopped still and stared and stared. Nesterin turned her head away and gritted her teeth.

“All that greeny weird shit,” said Sera darkly. “All that fade stuff. Baldy used to say he’d show me spirits when I slept. Is that what he’s doing to you now?”

“No,” said Nesterin.

“But you’d tell us, wouldn’t you? If he’d been talking to you in your dreams,” asked Rainier

“Of course I would,” snapped Nesterin.

She found three very sceptical faces staring back at her.

“I mean,” she said with a frustrated huff. “He might have come...once or twice before I left Skyhold. Just sort of...in the distance...I think. But not for months and months and months.”

“Honestly?”

“Yes,” she admitted heavily. It stung more than she wanted to own up to. “Not once. Not once this whole time.”

She used to feel connected to him, somehow, through dreams in the fade and through the anchor. But now, even her dreams he’d left her.

If it had ever been real,even a little bit, whatever life there had been in their love was dead now. There was no use in denying it. He’d moved on. He’d turned fully to his task.

“I swear, I’d tell you if he had.”

“Because you’re just _brilliant_ at telling people about your problems,” sniffed Sera.

“What’s that now?”

“Let’s see,” Sera went on bitterly. “First there was the mark. Your arm was going all melty into mush, so what did you do? You rolled down your sleeve, did up the button and said _don’t worry_ , _this is fine_ until you went, _actually, toodles, I’m going to go away and die now._ Like a cat slinking off under a porch in an alienage.”

“That’s not-”

“Then there was the booze. You stopped coming to the Herald’s Rest. It stopped being fun and started being sad because you kept doing it alone.”

“Sera, it's so much more complicated than-”

“And now? You get all glassy eyed. You go cloudy and you go away. All those voices, all sad and secret, whisper, whisper, whisper, whisper. I can see your lips move but you don’t _say_ anything. But that’s always been you all over.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Nesterin snapped. She looked at the others, hoping for a little back-up, but both Thom and Briala were wearing similar grim expressions.

Sera was just getting like this, Nesterin reminded herself, because she’d tried to do magic and had hated it.

And if Sera wanted to talk about secrets and self denial then Nesterin could pull up years and years worth of shit- all the evasiveness, all of the threats of violence, all of the downright _mean_ stuff that Sera said about the Dalish and about elves and about everything because she hated to admit what she was.

Fuck it, Nesterin thought, she might as well go down the line, round on her friends and let them hear the precious truth that they wanted so badly:

There was Rainier or Blackwall or whatever the fuck he wanted to call himself this week. If he _ever_ came for her about burying feelings or running away and hiding behind a mask, then all she had to do was say the words _Callier_ and he wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.

Even Briala wasn’t immune. Nesterin had seen the locket, she’d heard the whispers at the Winter Palace. Celene was long dead but Briala’s shoulders still stiffened to talk about her. Even though she’d said, as clear as day, that Celene had hurt their people. Maybe Nesterin should ask her the question: what would have happened if Celene hadn’t died? Would Briala have gone back to her, wagging her tail like a good little dog?

And it would feel _so_ good. To stomp and scream and shout. But Nesterin knew she didn’t have that luxury. In truth, Deshanna had bashed it out of her to begin with. _To lead them means that you’ll be lonely,_ she heard her Keeper say in the back of her head.

It was a good lesson. It had served her very well. She should try to remember it.  

So she bit back her words, she sighed heavily, she took her anger and she buried it. She buried it, and she buried it and she buried it.

“So I take it that means you all want to camp,” she said in a low, cool voice. “Fine. Put out the bed rolls. There’s all the food.”

She dove into the pack and tossed out the Grey Warden’s rations, more violently than she’d been intending. Bundles of flat breads and dried meats slid across the stone floor towards her friends, before she pulled the pack over her shoulder and turned away.

“Where are you going?” snapped Sera.

“To take a shit. Do want to come and watch? Or am I allowed to keep that to myself at least?”

“Actually, yeah. I do think someone should go with you.”

“Sera,” said Thom quietly, with a groan. “For fuck’s sake, give her a minute.”

Thom thought he was being kind, but Sera was being smart. Never trust a drunk alone in the dark.

Already the plan, to find a quiet spot far away from sharpened ears, and get started on the Grey Warden Vintage had calcified inside of Nesterin’s brain.

But then, Revekah opened her mouth and ruined the whole thing.

“I need to take a shit too.”

Nesterin tried not to slump visibly.

“And let you out of our sight down here? No way,” said Thom.

“I can do it here if you like,” Revekah threatened. “Mines have famously good ventilation don’t they?”

“It’s fine. She can come with me,” Nesterin said in a defeated voice. “I can handle her,” she added to Briala, who had opened her mouth to object.

“Dig a hole," said Sera, making a face. "A _deep_ one, yeah?”


	48. Heart of Darkness (part 2)

Nesterin and Revekah walked only a short while before the mine shaft began to widen. When the ceiling heightened, when the decline of the tracks in the earth became steeper, when wooden supports began to give way to more intricately carved stone pillars, Nesterin knew they were drawing closer to the Deep Roads proper. Possibly skirting around the upper edges of some abandoned, ancient Thaig.

The erosion and the greenish hue of the stone made her think of bodies. Bodies on the exalted plains, bodies in Emprise Du Lion, shuffling corpses in the Fallow Mire, bodies frozen below haven. Cold dead fingers propped up the rocks and the dirt, for now, stiff with rigor mortis but slowly softening, declining and decaying as bodies always did.

“I won’t tell them if you share,” said Revekah when the shaft tapered away into two levels, a mezzanine floor which they stood on, and another, darker, level below, accessed either by several sets of winding wooden staircases or by jumping off the steep edge of the level above.

“What?” Nesterin asked sharply.

“The booze. I won’t tell them about it if you share it with me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Like a cat, Revekah darted forwards and shoved the pack on Nesterin’s back. She hit it from a sideways angle and the two bottles of Grey Warden Vintages clanked together.

Spluttering half hearted denials, Nesterin swung the pack off her back, but Revekah grabbed it from her and, darting easily out of Nesterin’s reach, went rattling around inside. Pulling out one of the bottles, Revekah’s eyes went wide with triumph and she chortled:

“You’re fucked.”

“And you must think I’m mad,” snapped Nesterin, staring at the ground, her face burning red hot all over. “I get drunk and then you push me off the side of an abandoned mine?”

Uncorking the vintage with her teeth, Revekah sat down on the side of the mezzanine floor, one knee tucked into her chest, the other swinging idly off the side.

“Well I’m drinking. Call it a _shem’halam_. A temporary truce.”

It was embarrassing how quickly Nesterin sat down next to her. It was embarrassing how quickly she went into the pack for the other wine bottle, pausing briefly to take in the label.

She was glad that she did. Looking down at the faded, messy- honestly barely legible- scrawl, she read:

_Vintage: Warden Mirah Tabris. Goes down punching._

Nesterin’s thumb pressed on the place where the Warden had written her own name, and she murmured: “I’m sure that you did, lethallin.”

Her heart hurt when she thought about how long Alistair must have been keeping the bottle, and how close at hand it still had been.

Her heart hurt even more when she considered that Alistair had finally parted with it for her. That he had meant it to be a symbol of courage and hope. When, in reality, Nesterin’s hands corrupted it into weakness and despair.

The first deep sips barely even touched the sides.

The ground didn’t shake. The mountain didn’t split in two. The heavens didn’t burst open. It was just wine and for a moment the mountain was quiet.

 _All that hard work_ , Amaril lamented. _All that suffering. All that pain. Are you really going to throw it all away?_

She took another, aggressive, chug from the bottle just to spite the voices in her head.

Beside her, Nesterin was aware that Revekah was watching her, through pale and narrowed eyes. She drank from her own bottle like she was actually tasting it, not trying to drown in it, and then said after a few moments:

“So, what exactly are you planning to say to them? When you come staggering back with one eye shut and a great big purple mouth?”

“That’s thirty minutes from now’s problem.”

“Pah!” Revekah said, letting out a bark of bitter laughter. “I just remembered: I don’t actually care.”

But she _did_ care. Nesterin was almost certain of it now. Watching her try and struggle up the hill, watching her get more and more frustrated as they failed to find a way into the heart of the mountain, watching her getting as lost in a bottle as Nesterin did.

As if to drive the point home, Revekah looked out across the mezzanine, looking down as if straining to see the deepest points of the mountain, where the caves opened up into great halls formed around twisting stalactites and glistening calcium deposits. And she said, mostly to herself:

“When I lived with my brothers and sisters, we used to get booze from raiding mining operations like this one. Or we learned we could get drunk on this...fermented milk stuff.”

“But where did you get milk under a mountain?”

“Seriously?” Revekah looked at Nesterin like she was stupid.

Nesterin tried very hard not to dwell on that.

Warden Mirah Tabris’ personal blend tasted like dried damsons and liquorice and she was starting to affect Nesterin’s head. But it was fainter than Nesterin expected, like a faded whisper rather than a shout. The warden’s wine wasn’t enough, it only left her wanting. She would have been better off with liquor, a little whiskey perhaps or some cheap and nasty alienage gin. Something that still burned.

They’d been drinking whiskey in the foothills of Skyhold, Nesterin thought. When she’d first left for her clan. The soldier boys around the table, playing cards. All along Nesterin had suspected Revekah of being a spy. And she’d been right.

She’d pictured the two of them together, Nesterin remembered that too. Kissing, touching, his hands pulling the shirt from her shoulders.

A woman who’d grown up in the darkness would go so willingly to someone to who’d saved them.

“Do you remember when we met?” Nesterin asked Revekah.

“Yeah,” said the other woman, and she looked down and snorted. “We played cards. And you threw your weight around, letting those shemlen soldier boys drool and fawn all over you. _Ooh Herald, we love you Herald, let me lick your shoes Herald_. You always lapped it up while the rest us were called knife-ears.”

“That’s not,” she began heavily and then sighed. That wasn’t how she’d remembered it, but did that make it any less true? Reality shifted and warped while truths rubbed wounds into one another. Nesterin couldn’t stop looking at them. She couldn’t stop nursing them. She couldn’t stop squeezing them until all the blood ran out. And she took a breath and steeled herself.

“You asked me if I wanted to know who’d used your services at Skyhold.”

“Yeah? ”

Her heart felt like a knife in her chest and Nesterin remembered wading into the Well of Sorrows, watching the way the water moved and shifted and sang, weighing up the price and the danger and then, inevitably, drinking. Knowledge despite ( _because of_ ) the costs. Truth despite ( _because of_ ) the wounds.

Solas saw her for what she was inside of that well. Not long after, he was taking her face, taking her faith and breaking her heart.

 _A painful truth. Just like you wanted_ , a memory of Solas at Crestwood seemed to say.

“Tell me.”

Revekah stared at her. Slowly, her open mouth twisted up into a smile and she began to laugh. Her shoulders shook with it, she shut her eyes and looked up and up to where bats hung in the eaves of the mountains.

“No one,” Revekah chortled.

At first, she might as well have been speaking in another language for all that Nesterin could understand of this. Nesterin blinked and then drank a little more wine. How was the bottle more than half finished?

“Don’t lie to me,” Nesterin insisted.

Revekah just cackled harder. “I never fucked anyone at Skyhold. I wasn’t even posing as a prostitute. I worked in the laundry for a year. Got to be quite good with a mangle towards the end. I always pictured squeezing shemlen fingers.”

“But then why…”

“ _Because,_ ” said Revekah with an eye roll. “Because you always seemed like such a prim and perfect little priss and I wanted to mess with you. I wanted to see if you’d crack. But,” Revekah tilted her head, and something like regret, almost, drifted into her voice. “You’re _so_ cracked. I can’t believe you even remember that night.”

Nesterin remembered it so well that she could still hear the soldiers laughing and still see Revekah’s blood falling into the snow.

“You’re lying.”

“You think I wanted to spend my freedom getting fucked in exchange for information? You think Fen’Harel would have bid me to do that? When he’d seen what my father had become?”

Her hand drifted down to her side and Nesterin pressed down on her ribs to stop a flare of pain.

Solas, who believed that people had the right to choose, that freedom was as necessary as air, who was cold and warm and cold and burning in almost the same breath. He wouldn’t ask. But Fen’Harel, who used people in bloody battles, who turned to the path of death, merciless, ruthless….no….sign or trace of compassion. He _would_. Surely.

Sometimes Nesterin  drifted away from reality and found herself  thinking- or at least _wanting_ to think- that Solas was dead. Two years dead because Fen'Harel had killed him too. Her loved and lonely apostate, snapped between a wolf’s jaws.

She might have been able to grieve that way.

But that would have been too simple. A heart was nothing if not a lopsided, ugly, malformed mess of veins, sinew, blood, connections and secret chambers.

“I...I...I don’t know,” she stammered.

“An ancient Well of Knowledge in your head and still you know so little about anything.”

Did this change things?

No. No of course not. Not something so silly. Not something so small. One revelation amongst a thousand others, that was all. A drop of rain that would not turn the tide of an ocean.

Revekah was quiet as Nesterin turned things over in her head. Some of the laughter had gone from her eyes when she said, after a moment of struggling:

“Do me a favour, Nesterin? Don’t kill me in here. When the time comes….just promise to do it outside.”

“I’m not going to kill you, Revekah.”

“You should. You know, don’t you? I’m just a loose end. I told you, didn’t I? I’ve been out since….” she shook her frost bitten arm. “Left to rot in a Chantry cell. And in a Chantry Cell I should have stayed,”

Revekah gave hope with one hand. Then she gave despair with the other.

Her eyes sharpened as she watched Nesterin tense up slightly, her hand going instinctively to her spirit blade. “You can relax, I’m not stupid enough to try and kill _you_.”

Nesterin held up her hand. Then it drifted to her head and she rubbed at her temple.

“But you should stay sober if you don’t trust me,” Revekah said, with another snort.

“Too late,” Nesterin pointed out.

“You’re _so_ fucked,” sniffed Revekah.

“What happened to your arm?”

“I….” Revekah sniffed in sharply and pulled an ugly face. “Thought I could do something that I couldn’t. It doesn’t matter anyway. It didn’t work.”

The wine didn’t loosen her lips that far, apparently. Nesterin tried consulting the voices from the well, but they were as evasive as she was:

_It was not her promise to keep._

“And now I’m nothing,” Revekah said sadly.

“Run away, Revekah,” Nesterin insisted. “Just run away. Right now. I’ll shut my eyes and count to...the bottom of this bottle…”

“And go where?” Revekah sniffed and spat in the ground. “Be a maid or a whore in Kirkwall for all of five minutes? The veil is coming down. This world _is_ going burn. And I need to help.”

Briala probably would have slit her throat then and there. This dangerous, fanatical woman was her enemy, right down to her very core. Returning her to Fen’Harel could help only him and she might not even get her sister back out of it. Nesterin just sighed.

“I will never understand you, Revekah.”

“Bullshit,” said Revekah with a smirk. “You understand me now. Even though you’re trying so hard not to.”

“I’m not so certain that I do.”

The redhead rolled her eyes.

 _“Think about it._ Just for a minute. All I have ever known are the things missing from myself. Of the life that was taken from me,” she laughed bitterly. “Seven years. Seven years in the open air. And you know what I learned? Slipping into shadows. Seeing alienages. Posing as scullery maids and servants and slaves.  Our lives are the same. _All_ of them. Even yours, Shemlen Whore. Famed Herald of Andraste,” she spat thickly onto the dirt and went on:

“One way or another, we all grew up powerless and abused in the darkness. And then...when someone shows you a light….no, better when someone shows you the _sun_ …

Do you stay in your cave? Do you pretend you _like_ the cave?” Revekah asked. She reached over and tipped the bottle as Nesterin was pouring it into her throat, making her choke and her spill some of the wine.

“ _Hey_ -”

“-Do you dress up the cave, do a little dance in the cave, spit out a few babies to also stay in _the fucking cave_ and pretend you’ve made it better? Or do you smash down a wall and let in the light?”

“A wall is fine. Thousands upon thousands of lives is not,” Nesterin insisted.

“You act like Fen’Harel’s aim is nothing but ashes. I suppose that makes it easier for you.”

“I only have what he told me. And it sounded an awful lot like ashes.”

“You’re shit when it comes to the bigger picture.”

“Good. _Ma banal las halamshir var vhen,_ I know, I know,” she recited to Revekah.

She wished she were more sober, she’d be able to get the points out properly. She had arguments, she had beliefs. She did. Good ones. They were just hard to find amongst the swirling in her brain. “That’s all anyone ever says to me. But _it’s not….simple._ And it can’t…all of those lives…”

“So you like small things? Fine.There are children,” Revekah told her. “There _will_ be children. Once the veil is brought down and this rotten world is righted. Immortal and beautiful and they’ll breathe in time to the fade and be... _everything_ ….I would die rather than let them suffer the same life that I did. And I will never understand how you can sit here and knowingly condemn them to darkness and slavery.”

“I don’t." When the choice came, she had not condemned _her_ child to a half-life of darkness and slavery. "I’ve _tried_ ,” Nesterin insisted, gritting her teeth.

“And either way, you’re still condemning them all to death,” Revekah pointed out.

Stronger than even centuries of oppressive systems, the fabric of the universe was set against them.

Sweet Mythal, she wanted to weep.

There were terrible burdens and terrible costs that came with thinking of Justice and trying to be good and trying to do right. It was a dialogue between compassion and reason and individuals and the right to life that descended, always, into an argument.

The sun would never shine everywhere. There would always be shadows.

“Shut up,” was all that Nesterin could say to that.

“Literally. Inevitably. Slowly and quickly, all at once.”

“ _Shut up_ ,” she snapped again, standing up sharply.

This conversation was over. Back at the camp, they were probably already wondering where she had gone. But as she tried to stand, her arm made balancing difficult, and she lurched a little, her arm knocking into the Grey Warden vintage, sending it spilling over the side.

_Mirah._

With a dim thud, and then the sound of shattering, she heard the bottle hit the floor somewhere below them. Peering over the side, Nesterin sent up a prayer of thanks that it only seemed to have hit the staircase.  Even if the bottle was broken, she could still save the label.

Revekah let out another cold blast of laughter as Nesterin darted down the staircase. The wood trembled and groaned. The stone walls, she saw were dripping with moisture, causing stalactites to run down them like frozen tears.

Using the faintly glowing flame she held in her hand, Nesterin searched for the label, the glimmer from a few shards of glass catching the light as woodlice and termites writhed across the floor.

“Trying to save an already broken bottle?” Revekah sneered, a few steps above her. “And they say I’m crazy.”

Nesterin was about to snap that she had never pretended _not_ to be crazy, when the wash of a purple glow rose up through the gaps in the staircase. Below their feet, Nesterin could see the loose shape of a broad creature, clad in diaphanous armour.

“Spirit,” Nesterin instinctively holding her arm across the other woman.

“Well thank fuck for that,” said Revekah, knocking Nesterin’s arm away and darting down the stairs immediately. “I was getting tired of not knowing where the fuck we were.”

“Ma’'landivalis revasan him sa'bellanaris san hellathen,” said Revekah to the spirit.

 _My belief in freedom becomes a noble struggle,_ said the voices in the well. _And her accent is- as always- like grating a stone._

The spirit however, seemed not to respond too kindly to Revekah’s words, unsheathing a blade  remarkably similar to Nesterin’s own.

“Those who rest in the dreaming must be protected. But should those who go screaming remain un-avenged?” the voices told her that it said.

Drawing her own blade, Nesterin stepped down, and had the Well translate the words for her:

“It hurts us to pick a path through chaos,” she told the spirit in elvish. “We can’t protect everyone and that hurts even more.”

“It’s lost. It’s not one of ours,” Revekah hissed at her.

The spirit turned on Nesterin and took her in, spirit blade shining a light in the darkness.

“You have stolen that sword, now you come to harm my charges.”

“No” she told it. “See us. We are amongst the people you protect.”

“I see nothing. Only strange shadows, separate from themselves.”

“Mark me,” she said firmly, standing between Revekah and the spirit. “Mark the words I speak and the voices inside of me. See _them_.”

Drinking always made the voices quieter. They seemed so far away when they began to whisper all at once, talking of spirits and of purpose, of memories of spirits, of the feel of the fade. For a moment, she was worried it wouldn’t work, ready for an undoubtedly messy and dangerous fight given the state she was in and how precariously close they were to edge of a steep drop through the mountain.

The spirit did not sheath its sword, but it seemed to tip its head at her.

“You have been bound to the will of a powerful being?” it asked her. “Now you carry voices of elvhen within you?”

“Yes.”

“I see that you are some sort of enchanted object. One that has been granted a voice to speak for them.”

Nesterin winced slightly, “I had a voice before. And I’m not an object.”

The spirit ignored her.

“You are a strange and feeble shape to have been used for such a thing. They must have been quite desperate. Or they could not have foreseen how quickly you would begin degenerate.”

“It wasn’t really their decision,” Nesterin admitted.

The Spirit nodded and sheathed its sword. “I will aid your masters, as far as it does not cause me to stray from my own duties. What service would they have me help you with?”

Apparently, this sparked a pleased sort of murmur from the Well of Sorrows.

 **_You_ ** _never ask us that_ , said one of them accusingly.

 _And what would you have the spirit do for you?_ Amaril asked them sarcastically.

There was silence. And then a few murmurs.

_We exist to fulfil the Will of Mythal._

_Which would be? Because I don’t remember it, do you?_ Amaril pointed out.

_We do not presume to question or speak for our god._

_You want her to ask it to fulfil a will that you don’t know and won’t speak of?_ laughed Amaril. _And you wonder why she doesn’t ask you what you want more often?_

Nesterin stopped listening to Amaril argue with the other voices when Revekah poked her sharp fingers into the base of Nesterin’s spine.

“Get it to take us to the place of holding,” said Revekah.

“But this is the place of holding, shadow,” the spirit said, waving at Nesterin. “How can I take you to a thing which stands before you?”

“The other one,” Revekah insisted. When the spirit seemed to look away, she added, "Come on, I know you must have felt it.”

“I do not like that one,” murmured the spirit.

“Tough shit. That’s where she needs to go. Right?”

“What’s the place of holding?” Nesterin frowned. “And how am I place of holding too?”

“Ask the well of sorrows, genius,” said Revekah rolling her eyes. “Now tell the spirit it owes a duty.”

She was drunk, her judgement felt cloudy. And now the well of sorrows was saying:

 _You owe a duty, you owe a duty, you owe a duty, you owe a duty, you owe a duty, you owe a duty_ over and over and over so that she couldn’t help but say it too:

“You owe a duty.”

 _You are a world between worlds,_ the voices told her then. _Connecting together. A pocket of places beyond time and space. For bodies, for power, for the people._

_You mean like the crossroads?_

_Yes. That is what your people call it._

_I don’t understand. I’m just…a person._

_Connected to memories, connected to knowledge, connected to voices, connected to the Will of Mythal._

_Where do you think you go when you dream?_

_To the fade,_ Amaril insisted. _We go to the fade, as all dreamers do. To my memories._

_But that simply isn’t true, Amaril._

_You saw the swirling waves of the well underneath your memories…_

_The shemlen knew it. She knew where to look._

“I know how to slip between the mountains,” said the spirit. “We will be as swift as we can. Follow me.”

“Wait-” Nesterin called, but the spirit had already begun to descend the staircase. Thom and Sera and Briala were waiting, back at the camp, but it seemed as if she would have to take the next part of the journey alone.

Well, alone apart from Revekah, who looked at her gleefully as she went after the spirit.

“I’m going home. Bet you wish you hadn’t got so drunk now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the end, I had to split this into two because it got so fucking long and it had so much stuff in it and I hate it. Again, sorry this took so long but these next few chapters….have been difficult. Fun. But difficult.To say the least.


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